Logical Weakness / Video Games

Logical Weaknesses in video games.

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Pages with their own examples:

• Pokémon

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• Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: The Arsenal Birds defend themselves with a Powered Microwave Dome when threatened (well, that and a veritable swarm of Attack Drones). The shield has two weaknesses, though:
  • The PMD isn't a true Deflector Shield, it uses microwave radiation to prematurely detonate warheads and keep adversaries outside range for inert weapons. The last gun of Stonehenge is a railgun designed to shatter or deflect meteor fragments outside the atmosphere. The single massive, inert projectile it fires effortlessly penetrates the dome and destroys the first Arsenal Bird.
  • A microwave field that size guzzles an immense amount of power. The main reason the second Arsenal Bird keeps circling the Lighthouse even after the drone AI has effectively gone rogue is because it's hogging an entire orbital solar plant's microwave-transmitted output to keep itself juiced up. Having already been leaning on its PMD in desperation, when this output is turned off, it disables the PMD to save power and becomes vulnerable to conventional attacks.
• Alan Wake: The Taken are empowered by darkness. As such, Alan has to "burn off" the darkness covering them before he can hurt them... unless he has a flare gun or flashbangs. The sheer luminosity that flares or flashbangs puts out is far too much for standard Taken to withstand, killing them on the spot; even if they're far enough away to survive, it still blows away their protection in one go.
• Ashes of the Singularity: Post-Humans travel via quantum transmission, but if someone finds a way to block those transmissions, they can keep Post-Humans out. This eventually happens when Mars sets up quantum jamming across the entire planet which might as well be a solid titanium shell as far as the PHC is concerned.
• In Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning, Baldi is mentioned to have really good hearing, and knows exactly what sound is made and where it came from. So, using something that causes a constant sound like a phone or a tape causes Baldi to stop whatever he’s doing and try to turn it off.
• Baldur's Gate II: one of the quest involves fighting an empathic manifestation, a sort of demon that feeds on pain and suffering. Any attempt do damage it, whether through magic or physical means, only results in the creature healing and getting more powerful after a while. Then, heal spells actually cause damage until its demise.
• Bendy, the Big Bad of Bendy and the Ink Machine, is a soulless cartoon demon brought to life through magic that his old animator, Henry has to go up against. Bendy is absurdly strong, can appear from anywhere, follow Henry almost anywhere, and cannot be harmed by any conventional means. But the only reason he can do any of that is because he's a cartoon, and there's one thing that stops any toon: 'The End' card.
• BioShock and its sequel are set underwater. Apart from the "one-two" punch of slugging Splicers while they're stunned from Electro Bolt, you quickly learn that shooting an Electro Bolt into a pool of water makes for a very effective attack against most splicers. The "most" qualifier notes another Logical Weakness: you can't use an elemental power against a Splicer already imbued with the same power — their Required Secondary Powers protect them from your attacks as well as their own. Electro Bolt is also a logical attack to use against the electrically-powered defenses of Rapture (cameras, turrets, and bots), allowing you the chance to get close enough to hack them. BioShock Infinite preserves most of the logical effects with its electric Vigor, Shock Jockey. Shocked enemies take more damage and using it in water or in combination with the water-based Vigor Undertow are recommended.
• Bloodborne:
  • The Blood-Starved Beast is easily distracted by pungent blood cocktails. You know, cuz' she's starved for blood and all.
  • The Orphan of Kos is a Humanoid Abomination that fights very similar to a Hunter, and is incredibly strong and fast. However, because it fights so much like a Hunter instead of like an Old One, it has some of a Hunter's weaknesses, such as gaps that allow a well-timed shot to parry it. Granted, actually getting the parry on some of those attacks requires ridiculous timing, but the opening exists.
• In Bloons Super Monkey, the player's weapons come from one of five categories- Darts, Boomerangs, Explosives, Magic and Tech, and each of them have a corresponding bloon type they can't affect:
  • Darts and Boomerangs can't penetrate the thick-shelled Lead Bloons.
  • Magic, which consists of fire- and lightning- based spells cannot affect Ceramic Bloons since clay Ceramic is heat-resistant and a terrible conductor of electricity.
  • Tech, which consists of light- based energy attacks can't affect Glass Bloons, since they are transparent and reflective.
• In Bug Fables, plant and fungus enemies take extra damage from Leif's ice attacks, since, being plants and fungi, they are more susceptible to the low temperatures. Also, the main characters are all instantly defeated by the Wasp King's magic of flame, because fire is deadly to all insects. In the final chapter, the enemies can set the characters on fire, which deals more damage to them than the poison does, for the same reason.
• In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, the Soviets have a Support Power called Orbital Drop that makes certain artificial objects in space fall back to the Earth to damage a designated area in the ground. It causes considerable damage, but aircraft units lose all balance and are instantly sent to crash if they are hit by any of the falling objects, even the tiny debris that ground units are completely unaffected by.
• "Riot" zombies in Contagion wear bulletproof armor. One efficient way to take them out is with melee weapons of any kind or explosives, exactly the kinds of harm that bulletproof armor fares poorly against IRL.
• In Darkest Dungeon II, the various enemy factions tend to have weaknesses to particular status effects which make sense based on the faction's theme:
  • The Tangle's Lost Battalion are skeletons overgrown and animated by masses of cursed roots and vines. They're weak to Burn because all that plant matter is very flammable.
  • The Plague Eaters of the Foetor are enormously swollen mutants - their fatty, blob-like flesh is easy to cut or pierce, making them weak to Bleed. They've also degenerated into Monstrous Cannibalism, but this means that they rely on eating their fallen to heal and to gain their strongest buffs, leaving them vulnerable to moves that clear corpses off of the field.
  • Fanatics in the Sprawl are fire-worshiping cultists covered in open burns, which make them extremely sensitive to caustic liquids and infections, giving them vulnerability to Blight. In a more amusing example, the Librarian has an attack called Categorize that can force your heroes to move... except he's doing this to sort them into alphabetical order by class name, being literally a crazed librarian, so if they're already in that order the attack won't move them.
  • The Cultists have grown much more powerful since the first game, and are easily the most dangerous faction. However, because they're so dangerous, all of the heroes agree that they must be destroyed, which means a fight with them can shore up a party that's on the verge of collapsing into infighting.
• One that unfortunately applies to the player: the fight with the Looking-Glass Knight in Dark Souls II is a Battle in the Rain. The Looking-Glass Knight's primary weapon is electricity, and being soaked makes your lightning resistance tank.
• The Abyss Watchers in Dark Souls III have a very nimble, hard-to-follow combat style that excels at getting around defenses and striking hard and fast, but both in their boss fight and in regular gameplay with the Farron Greatsword, it has certain vulnerabilities: the lack of a shield makes it more vulnerable to ranged fire, the flips have long wind-ups and recoveries (in particular, the third off-hand attack is a flipping sword strike that leaves you extremely exposed), the inability to not one-hand the greatsword makes it extremely parriable, and its focus on mobility and speed means that fights on narrow ledges can lead to some easily avoidable deaths (not that you get to take advantage of this in the Watchers' boss fight arena, which is an empty rectangular room).
• The Darkness: as another character puts it, it does not take being a rocket scientist to figure out Jackie's weakness to the light. Even if his enemies don't catch on to his obvious shadow powers, they're likely to use floodlights or other sources of light while defending themselves, since Jackie's assaulting them during nighttime hours or in underground locations. It does not actively harm him, but it nullifies all of his powers, and Jackie is nearly always surrounded by something very lethal to him.
  • The second game takes it further, as The Darkness itself figures out multiple logical weaknesses in its host to better manipulate him, exploiting his underlying fears and nightmares since it can see into his mind and soul. The most notable one is the Lotus-Eater Machine prison in the shape of an asylum for Jackie's mind, horrifyingly effective because Jackie himself, when cast in it, begins to doubt his own sanity. In the bad ending, he can accept this prison as reality and be stuck there forever.
• Deep Town: Mining Factory: The Oil Elder is a Botanical Abomination made out of oil and drum cans. Naturally, it's Weak to Fire, taking extra damage when set on fire by the otherwise rather weak Fire Blast.
• In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the Final Boss is protected by a bullet and explosion proof glass shield, meaning you normally spend the bulk of the fight trying to get the shield down. However, glass still allows light to go through it. Lasers are made of light. If you have a Laser Rifle handy, you can end the fight pretty much instantly.
• Devil May Cry: The Frost demons receive more damage from the fire-elemental Ifrit Devil Arm.
• Most of the tower guardians (and the Gigapede) in Devil May Cry 3 possess some form of elemental weakness that you can exploit.
• Devil May Cry 5:
  • The Qliphoth Roots in Mission 1 are just demonic plant roots bundled together to form one giant barricade, so the protagonists easily figure out that it is vulnerable to fire, which can be produced by the Exceed function of Nero's sword. Nico even points this out just as the fight starts.
    Nico: Incinerate 'em! That sword makes it easy, right?
  • Just like its roots, the Qliphoth's Blood Clots are also plant-based, making them vulnerable to fire as stated in a loading screen tip.
• In Digital Devil Saga, Earth attacks are "shielded" against by flying enemies; see the Pokémon Ground-versus-Flying example above. This is one of the few logical immunities in the series.
• In Disco Elysium all of your skills have the potential to be double-edged swords — the higher they are, the more they shape your thoughts and control you. What begins as advice can eventually become a compulsion, restricting what dialogue options you can choose in certain circumstances or just becoming overbearingly loud compared to the other skills.
• Dwarf Fortress:
  • Forgotten Beasts and Titans made out of fluids may seem like a cool concept, except they can take about as much damage as the material they are made out of. The result is giant blobs of grime, smoke, or water getting torn apart with one punch by a single, untrained dwarf. Just like how easy it is to splash water around with a simple punch. On the opposite end, Beasts/Titans made of metals are among the most dangerous entities in the game, especially if that metal is steel.
  • The game simulates gravity and falls well enough that pitfall traps quickly become very deadly to big enough threats, or threats made from dense materials. Or, as is the case of a Bronze Colossus, both: They may be The Juggernaut normally, but if they fall even two stories (let alone the usual ten for standard-fare pitfall traps) they will likely collapse into little bronze fragments at the bottom.
• Elden Ring:
  • The boss Starscourge Radahn is highly weak to Scarlet Rot, because you fight him after he's already been infected with the Rot, so you're simply accelerating the progression of his illness.
  • Malenia has multiple of these that take her down from 'completely unfair' to merely 'monstrously difficult':
    • Malenia is one of the smallest demigods and relies on her swordsmanship skills instead of sheer might. Because of this, she can be parried, unlike other endgame bosses such as Mohg and Godfrey who are simply too stable to knock down that way. Of course, she's still a superlative fighter and so it takes 3 parries to stun her instead of the usual 2, but it is doable. Also, because she's relatively human-sized, it's also possible for some big hits to either send her flying or knock her flat on her ass (although it's probably best not to rely on this since most of her attacks have hyper armor).
    • Malenia has superb poison and rot resistances since she's been dealing with the Scarlet Rot for her entire life and is used to it, but she's still Delicate and Sickly by demigod standards, meaning that her resistances to other status effects such as bleed and frost are down the tubes.
    • Her prosthetic arm isn't quite as fluid and mobile as an organic arm would be, and she has to take a few moments to readjust it before most of her attacks, which gives her some small openings and serves as a fairly obvious tell since her arm gives off sparks while doing so.
  • Lightning does extra damage to metallic enemies (such as Abductor Virgins and Silver Tears) and steel-armored enemies like knights. Anything standing in a pool of water (or outside while it's raining) will take extra damage from lightning as well.
  • Crystalians are made out of living crystal (as the name suggests), so while they're extremely resistant to slashing, piercing, and magic damage, striking damage will make them crack, rendering the fights a lot easier.
  • Want to completely neuter the Mimic Tear? Get naked. Boss variant Mimic Tears are exact copies of the Tarnished as they enter the boss room. So, if you enter the boss room with absolutely nothing equipped (or better still, with Daedicar's Woe, which increases incoming damage), the Mimic Tear will spawn in naked and have to fight you with its bare fists, while you can re-equip your stuff after the Mimic has finished copying you.
  • Erdtree Avatars are living trees, and things mutated by the Scarlet Rot take on an almost fungal nature, so naturally both of these are Weak to Fire. Erdtree Avatars that have been mutated by Scarlet Rot are very weak to fire. Malenia, being the God of Rot's chosen vessel, is weak to it as well, though this is mitigated somewhat by the pool of water in her arena, since anything standing in water will get increased resistance to fire.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
  • Forsworn Briarhearts are semi-undead cultists whose hearts have been replaced with the magical herb briarheart. It's actually possible to pickpocket the briarheart, which will kill them instantly. But unless your sneak and pickpocket skills are high enough to get past their enhanced hearing, it's much easier (if nowhere near as hilarious) to just fight them head-on.
  • Falmer are a species of underground albinos goblins-like creatures who are blind but have very sensitive hearing. While their enhanced hearing makes sneaking past them much harder at low level, their blindness makes them trivially easy to be avoided once you're highly trained in stealth (or use the Muffle spell), contrary to any other non-blind enemies. It also means using light sources when exploring their dungeons aren't at risk to alert them. That being said, the Falmer are often accompanied by Chaurus, a species of bugs which aren't blind, and aggroing Chaurus often alerts Falmer as well.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Some surprisingly-logical tactics have been introduced in the Final Fantasy games starting around IV. For example, such as harming undead with curative spells and items, or killing them completely with anything that causes resurrection, such as a Phoenix Down or casting a Life spell.
  • It's a plot point in Final Fantasy VI that some enemies are essentially Made of Magic. This has the logical caveat that if they run out of Magic Points, they cease to exist. This makes the Rasp and Osmose spells rather more useful than they appear at first glance.
  • A stone based monster in Final Fantasy IX can be killed instantly by using a Soft on it, which is normally used on petrified allies. The game states that the monster "became too soft to live". There's even an entire area of stone-based enemies that are susceptible to this tactic. The boss at the end is a reanimated petrified tree, and can be instantly killed with Soft OR Phoenix Down.
• Corrin, the player avatar and main character of Fire Emblem Fates, has dragon blood so dominant they can to turn into one. Consequently, they're weak to anti-dragon weapons, even if they aren't using their dragonstone, or even if they've changed to a class that can't transform at all. Also, all of Corrin's children will inherit the weakness, even if they don't inherit the ability to transform.
• God of War (PS4): The Stranger is under a curse that makes him impossible to hurt, but can still be knocked around or subjected to holds. It's easier said than done since he is a master at unarmed fighting, but the first two times he's defeated, it's by tossing him somewhere he can't immediately return from. And when the curse is broken for the final fight, he's such a Sense Freak about his renewed ability to feel that he keeps fighting like a berserker, heedless about the fact that feeling pain means that he's taking damage that eventually overwhelms his ability to heal.
• God of War Ragnarök: Heimdall's Combat Clairvoyance makes him impossible to hit in combat; luckily for the protagonist, the ability comes with some of these.
  • Since it's an extremely powerful sense, Heimdall is vulnerable to sensory overload; hit him with too many incoming threats, and he's going to be overwhelmed considering all of them. The Draupnir Spear is designed to take advantage of this weakness with its self-replicating and explosive abilities.
  • He can sense an enemy's intent to attack, but that doesn't tell him what the attack actually does, just where it's going to be. He takes his first hit in his boss fight when he catches the Draupnir Spear Kratos throws... not knowing that it can explode. He'll wise up and not catch any more spears... but he can still be lured over thrown spears on the ground, which can then be detonated on him. Those don't trigger his sense, since they're just sitting on the ground until they explode.
  • Finally, the greatest weakpoint of Heimdall's ability is Heimdall himself. He may know when to dodge, but his ability to actually do so is limited by his own physical capabilities, which Kratos exploits by throwing punches so fast Heimdall can't react in time and takes a hit. He also has to choose to act upon his foreknowledge, meaning that if he's goaded into not wanting to dodge, his power does nothing. It doesn't help that he has a very short temper and fragile ego, so taunting him into doing something stupid is relatively easy.
• The "Poacher's Day" event in Granblue Fantasy reveals the weakness of Tweyen/Song, who is known to have an extremely strong sense of sight, capable of seeing far distances with clarity. As someone with such great visual acuity, it makes sense that she'd be somewhat photosensitive under direct sunlight... and that bright days out by the seaside, with tons of light reflection off the water, gives her so much trouble that she's practically reduced to the level of a totally standard archer.
• In Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, JARAXXUS, EREDAR LORD OF THE BURNING LEGION!!! gets hit with this. For reference, Lord Jaraxxus is Warlock Legendary that replaces your hero with himself. There's a normally useless card, given how it only works against Demons, which only Warlocks have called Sacrificial Pact, which destroys a Demon to heal the user for 4. Nowhere does it say this has to be one of your own Demons. Neither does it say said demon has to be a minion. The result? Sacrifical Pact can target and destroy the Jaraxxus Hero for an instant win. Zig-Zagged with Lord Malchezaar (a fellow Eredar Lord). If Sacrifical Pact is directly cast on him, Malchezaar will counter it. However, if cast through cards such as Yogg-Saron or Tortollian Primalist (both of which randomly cast spells when summoned), Malchezaar will be unable to counter it, leading to a rather predictable result. (Note: This interaction is no longer possible due to Sacrificial Pact getting nerfed to only being able to target friendly units.)
• Cole MacGrath from inFAMOUS is officially the first protagonist of a sandbox game that can justify his inability to swim. (In fact, he IS able to swim for a very short while, and he's perfectly fine if he steps in a small puddle, although if someone else steps in the puddle shortly afterwards they won't be so fine.)
  • Chain-link fences provide perfect cover from Cole's lightning for the same reason — electricity, by its very nature, follows the path of least resistance and gets grounded by those fences. Though one has to wonder why he can't simply climb the fence, especially since he's very skilled at Le Parkour. Does the fence suck the electricity out of him?
    • His inability to climb fences seemed to be a limitation of the game engine, since he got over it in the second game. His inability to shoot through metal fences, however, was shown to be completely diegetic, as he was rendered a sitting duck when he was trapped behind metal bars.
• In inFAMOUS: Second Son, Delsin Rowe has Power Copying abilities that allow him to absorb the powers of other Conduits. Unfortunately, this means that he suffers from How Do I Shot Web? every time he absorbs a new powerset. The Big Bad tries to use this against him in her boss fight by letting him absorb her concrete powers, but he manages to absorb enough powers to fight back and beat her.
• KanColle: Installation-type bosses take extra damage from Type-3 antiaircraft shells. Type-3 shells were, historically, bad at their original purpose (taking out aircraft with a cloud of shrapnel; they were essentially shotgun shells for battleships), but excellent at tearing up ground-based structures when used in shore bombardment.
• Katana ZERO: The Dragon's precognition is an odd variant on a Death-Activated Superpower—he can mentally go backwards in time if he foresees himself dying. But if he doesn't die in a vision, his future sight doesn't trigger, so it doesn't protect him if he only gets knocked out. This is exploited by V to capture him, by Comedy and Drama to drug him, and is seen again when he's victimized by a suicide bomber in the bunker.
• The entirety of Kirby's Epic Yarn sees Kirby transformed into a yarn-outline of himself. While this does give him several new powers, like a yarn whip and Voluntary Shapeshifting, Kirby also loses his famous ability to inhale enemies and float through the air like a balloon since the air goes right through his body.
• Kirby Star Allies has enemies with elemental weaknesses. Not all enemies have them, but those that do tend to be pretty obvious.
  • Whispy Woods, being a tree, takes more damage if he's attacked with fire abilities. You can even temporarily set him on fire and defeating him with fire leads to an alternative defeat animation that ends with him severely singed as he's doing his usual cry animation.
  • Kracko is a storm cloud that can call down thunder or rain. Its downpour attack is harmful to you, but also to it, as potent ice will freeze him solid while electricity flows upstream and hurts him too.
  • Francisca cools her axe so that Kirby and his friends can adhere to it when it is thrown; striking it with fire will melt the blade and make it useless. Likewise, her "soda gun" sprays water at a fast pace, but like Kracko, an electrical shock will fry her and leave her stunned.
  • Flamberge has a cannon with a powerful incendiary round she can load into it for exceptional amounts of damage, but the firing mechanism is linked to a fuse; put it out, and the incendiary will overcook and explode, with the resulting trauma knocking Flamberge out.
  • Zan Partizanne can use a trio of drums to help channel her electrical powers; striking the drums with water will trigger an electrolysis reaction, which causes the drums to overheat and explode, giving their user a massive headache.
• The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: Since it's made of magma, the Destroyer's legs turn solid when a sufficient amount of water engulfs them, halting its march.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
  • Guardians Stalkers and Skywatchers are very quick, incredibly durable and their laser blasts can deal six heart damage. However, due to the design of Guardians, they cannot directly look up. Therefore, if the player is careful enough, they can cripple the Guardian from above without even alerting them to what attacked them in the first place.
  • Lizalfos and Wizzrobe's Fire and Ice variants can be instantly killed when hit by their opposing elements.
  • Weapons that are designed for mining or breaking rocks such as the Iron Sledgehammers, Goron greatswords or Drillshafts will do increased damage to Stone Taluses. In the case of the smaller Pebblits, they will shatter instantly.
• Armors in Let It Die have their weaknesses mostly justified by their factions. D.O.D Arms are repurposed construction outfits like traincoat and work aprons which are resistant to elemental hazards but less so to regular attacks, War Ensemble are modern military gears which are great against projectiles but weak to slashing weapons, Candlewolf have fantasy armor really strong against slashing but less so against firearm and blunt weapon and M.I.L.K's gear are Blood Sport uniforms which give them resistance to blunt attacks but not slashing.
• Livestream: Escape from Hotel Izanami: When Mio reaches into a drain with a coat hanger to get something out of it, she gets ensnared by long black hair that starts reaching down from it. If she got the scissors beforehand, she can use them to cut herself free.
• Lords of Magic: Most of the units in the Fire Nation's army are Glass Cannons with high attack, but they possess the weakest naval unit of all the nations... the ferry, a Master of None that serves only as a transport on the rare occasions when they need to move their citizens across water.
• In Magicka, while your characters are all Squishy Wizards already, you can shock yourself if you use electricity while soaked. Another logical sequence of attacks is to cast an ice spell on a soaked enemy, which will completely freeze them. Hurling a boulder on top of that will lead to Literally Shattered Lives.
• Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam: The inhabitants of the Paper Mario universe take more damage from fire attacks because they're, well, made of paper. This extends to both paper enemies and Paper Mario himself. It even applies to paper enemies who use fire themselves, such as Fire Bros. and Fire Piranha Plants.
• Often occurs in Mass Effect, due to the hardness of the universe.
  • Spaceships use kinetic barriers that allow deflection of debris and mass accelerator rounds, but only up to a certain point. As their name also implies, they're kinetic barriers, and thus only effective upon physical mass; laser-based weaponry can bypass them completely but has yet to be developed beyond defensive weaponry.
  • Personal kinetic barriers are calibrated specifically to deflect small and high-velocity objects, but allow slower moving objects to go through ("so the subject can sit down without knocking away their chair"-gametext). This has led to special bullets that have different shapes and speeds than normal in order to be more effective against armor, as well as phasic and disruptor bullets that inflict part of their damage as electricity, which goes straight through shields.
  • Biotics have powerful Gravity Master/Mind over Matter abilities, but with the exception of the Asari (due to their reproductive systems and some Prothean genetic engineering), who have precise control over their nervous systems, any biotic who wishes to use their powers effectively have to have special implants. Also, since they use their own bio-electricity to fuel their powers, biotics who use their powers on a regular basis require greater caloric intake than normal.
  • Thanks to the Square-Cube Law, even with mass effect fields, the largest ships are unable to land on a planet. The Sufficiently Advanced Alien Reapers can get around this, but are still quite awkward on the ground. In addition, this makes their kinetic barriers far weaker.
  • The Salarians specialize in espionage and intelligence based warfare, relying on crippling and removing an enemy's ability to fight before even officially starting a war. This dependence on preemptive covert action leaves them vulnerable to direct, prolonged warfare however, and also means they're not well-equipped to fight Reapers, who cannot be spied on or subverted, and who took them completely by surprise, so they had no chance for preemptive actions.
  • Similarly, the asari are considered to be on average the galaxy's deadliest combatants on a personal or small unit level, making them preeminent commandos and special forces, but due to the specialization in small-unit tactics they're at a disadvantage when it comes to large scale mass combat. This is seen in the third game when Earth and Palavan are able to keep resistance against the Reaper invasions going for months (and the turians and krogan eventually drive the Reapers off Palavan) as humans, turians and krogan are more experienced in mass warfare. Thessia, on the other hand, falls to Reaper control within days or weeks.
• The Mega Man (Classic) games often use this: Electric guys experience shorts when you stick a blade in them; fast guys are vulnerable to time stopping, and so forth. The Weapon Archive in 10 is a Puzzle Boss/Final-Exam Boss that requires you to know your Mega Man history and ask "Which of my weapons is most like what beat this guy the first time?"
  • Mega Man 8 has these for six out of eight Robot Masters. Clown Man gets tangled in his ridiculously-long arms if hit with Tornado Hold; Thunder Claw is the only safe way to bounce Grenade Man's bombs at him; Sword Man (who's fire-based) is left smoldering if hit with Water Balloon; Search Man lights on fire if you hit his bush hiding spot with Flame Sword; Astro Man, a neurotic (listen to his greeting), freaks out and can't move if you lock on with the Homing Sniper; and Tengu Man, a flying boss, is grounded by the Ice Wave (like how airplanes are grounded if their wings ice up). The exceptions are Aqua Man (weak to the Astro Crush because the force of it breaks his supply tank, forcing him to fix it) and Frost Man (blinded by the Flash Bomb because, being An Ice Person, light reflects too well off him causing Snow Blindness).
  • In some cases, though, it requires some advance knowledge of the boss to be able to figure out what to use. In Mega Man 10, why would Strike Man's weapon be the best to use against Sheep Man? Because the former uses the Rebound Striker (which bounces around due to being a rubber ball) and the latter uses the Thunder Wool. There's also Nitro Man's weakness to the Chill Spike, similar to motorbike wheels getting punctured by spike strips. In fact, while every boss in Mega Man 10 has weaknesses that fall into this trope, most require knowing just what the boss does.
  • Mega Man 9's Robot Masters use a similar arrangement where the boss's weakness tends to counter their favorite tactic, and often outright shuts it down. Concrete Man loves his shoulder charges, and making concrete blocks to trap you; he's weak to the Laser Trident, which is a straight-firing weapon perfect for the flat room and a boss that charges a lot, and it has shield-piercing properties that destroy the blocks. The Laser Trident's user, Splash Woman, spends most of the fight swimming around high above and sending swarms of fish after you; she's weak to the Hornet Chaser, a homing weapon that can not only destroy her fish, but hunt her down from her lofty position. And the Hornet Chaser's user, Hornet Man? His main attack is sending out three bee projectiles that hover for a moment before swarming — and his weakness is Magma Bazooka, a shotgun-type weapon that also fires three projectiles, at a perfect angle to kill his bees.
  • In the games, if a Robot Master's main strategy involves abusing Collision Damage, they will probably be weak to shield weapons (3: Top Spin—which protects you while in midair—vs. Shadow Man, 6: Plant Barrier vs. Tomahawk Man, 7: Junk Shield vs. Freeze Man, 11: Acid Barrier vs. Impact Man. The only subversion appears to be 2, where Air Man's best known for his tornado projectiles yet is weak to the Leaf Shield).
  • The various weapons acquired in Mega Man 11 are this twofold to the Robot Master that they are ideally used against; both due to the nature of the weapon versus the nature of the target, and the way the target moves in relation to the weapon's attack pattern. Take Torch Man, for example; not only is he fire-themed and based on an object which carries his element, but he often tries to get in melee range of Mega Man, with his most powerful attacks coming from above. What works best? ^AnswerIt's the Tundra Storm. A powerful wind can blow out a flame instead of spreading it, and the ice and snow in any blizzard is mostly made of frozen water, which also extinguishes fire. Also, it hits around Mega Man, especially above and below him, before the Power Gear gets involved.
  • One of the odder inversions of this is Ice Man, in Mega Man, who is ice-powered and dressed in a parka. You'd think he'd be weak to the fire weapon, but it's the other way around; Fire Man is weak to his weapon, and he takes no damage from Fire Man's weapon. Instead, he's weak to Elec Man's weapon. It’s explained in supplementary materials that Ice Man was designed for extreme CLIMATE conditions, not just extreme cold. This means that instead of a logical weakness, Ice Man has a logical STRENGTH, with his cooling system being so efficient that he’s able to take heat out of the environment and form ice attacks.
  • In Mega Man 4, Pharaoh Man being weak to Flash Stopper may seem odd at first, but it makes much more sense when you remember why flash photography and the like are prohibited in museums: it can potentially damage and thusly reduce the lifespan of the exhibits.
• Mega Man X also uses this. Ice bosses like Chill Penguin, Frost Walrus, and Blizzard Wolfang can't stand fire (fire melts ice), while Fire bosses like Flame Mammoth, Magma Dragoon, and Burn Dinorex are weak to wind (wind blows out fire). The Boomerang Cutter can sever Launch Octopus' limbs, making him unable to use some of his most powerful attacks, such as twirling around to suck X in and using his tentacles to leech X's life. Using it on Flame Mammoth cuts off his trunk, denying him many useful abilities, including his signature Fire Wave, for the rest of the battle.
  • Mega Man X4 has a notable example with the final boss' first form, a cloaked Grim Reaper Sigma. He's immune to almost everything and only vulnerable to the weapon/technique obtained from Magma Dragoon, since cloaks are flammable and said fire-based abilities will cause it to burn.
• Metal Gear Solid:
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater:
    • Colonel Volgin, the Big Bad, can generate and control electricity, and while some of his weaknesses are merely personality quirks, others follow logically from his powers: his electric bolts can be pulled away from their intended target by conductive materials, he can't use his powers in water without hurting himself, and as a Required Secondary Power, his body is highly conductive, making him a human lightning rod. The first two weaknesses can be exploited in his boss fight, and the last ultimately results in his Karmic Death.
    • The Pain has the ability to control a swarm of bees, and who you fight in a large water-filled cavern. It's possible to avoid his attacking swarms entirely by diving into the water, weaken them by waving a torch or applying bug spray, and disrupt his bee-armor by throwing grenades into the water and splashing him.
  • Elsa and Ursula from Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops are able to read minds and predict the future, but still think at normal human speeds. Gene kills her by using his Super-Speed to move too fast for her brain to follow.
  • The Man on Fire of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Being, well, a Man on Fire, he can be warded off by enough water, like a sprinkler system or Venom Snake's nigh-useless squirt gun. In the cassette tape "The Man on Fire's Weakness", Ocelot, despite expressing surprise at how simple it is to ward him off, nonetheless acknowledges that it makes sense.
• At the start of Metroid Fusion, Samus needed to be injected with a serum containing DNA from the last Metroid hatchling in order to save her from the infestation of X parasites in her central nervous system. Since Metroids were the natural predator of the X, this enabled her to absorb the X on contact. However, she also inherited the Metroids' well-documented aversion to cold temperatures as a side effect from the injection, something the X weaponize at first by floating bare-gel in the sub-zero ARC sector.
• When the aforementioned X are detected through footage feeds on planet ZDR in Metroid Dread, the Galactic Federation's first solution was to send the Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier (E.M.M.I.) units to investigate; being purely mechanical in nature, compared to the organically integrated Security Robot B.O.X in Fusion, made them absolutely immune to X infection. Cyberwarfare is another story, as they were hijacked by the Chozo still on the planet's surface. When they went missing after their mission began, the GF deployed Samus to investigate, with her being the only other X-proof entity in the galaxy.
  • The E.M.M.I. themselves have several logical weaknesses given their design parameters or as a result of being machines;
    • Part of the appeal of sending E.M.M.I. robots to face the X Parasites is that they are freakishly durable, touted as being created from some of the toughest material in the universe. Sure enough, even Samus can't match them in a regular scrap, as nothing in her casual arsenal besides maybe the Power Bomb or the Wave Beam can scratch them. However, they are still machines with a power source, and Samus is able to exploit this weakness on the last E.M.M.I. by realizing her Metroid DNA; since Metroids eat by sucking the energy out of creatures like a vampire, E.M.M.I. units are effectively walking pools of water for Samus to drink from. The same E.M.M.I. that holds her down is rendered helpless the moment Samus touches it.
    • About half of the E.M.M.I. Samus encounters have some mobility weakness Samus can actively exploit to stay alive in her encounters with them, such as being too bulky to fit into narrow holes, having a difficult time stopping once they pick up speed, or being partially broken at the point in time where Samus fights them, removing their ability to climb walls. Even the ones working perfectly normally that aren't stymied by the Speed Booster making them move too fast are still reliant on a visual medium to locate and lock on to Samus - they can hear her from across several rooms, but they can't pinpoint her if she's invisible.
    • Being machines with rigid coding, all E.M.M.I. are stuck in a patrolling pattern across the underground sections of ZDR. Samus can exploit this fact to make running from them a viable strategy, since they can't go beyond their programmed routes.
• Minecraft:
  • Skeletons will run from tamed wolves, because dogs like bones.
  • Feeding a bird a cookie will kill it, because chocolate is lethal to birds.
  • One of the more dangerous foes are Blazes. They can fly, they spawn in high numbers from spawners, they throw fireballs, and can light you on fire in a dimension where water is nowhere to be found. They can be killed quite easily by tossing snowballs at them.
• The Gunlance from Monster Hunter looks very impressive but it has a major weakness that serves to balance its impressive damage output and defensive qualities. Because it is basically a multi-shot cannon on a handle with an oversized bayonet, the wear on the weapon from all the resulting heat and stress is insane. Firing its shells causes the blade's Sharpness to rapidly deteriorate much more than an ordinary Lance just used for melee, forcing users to leave themselves defenseless much more often to resharpen their weapon. The Wyvern's Fire special attack, the strongest shot Gunlances can fire, requires it to charge up the shot and then forces the weapon to engage a heatsink for nearly two minutes afterward.
• In Mother 1, main character Ninten is an asthmatic, so anything that can trigger an asthma attack (like living cars belching toxic fumes at the party) will render him helpless.
• In Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes, both the Plant and Zombie heroes have a weakness to their powers — which is utilized in the story cutscenes where your side faces them:
  • For the Zombies: Impfinity clones himself with a device on his body which malfunctions when shot, causing his clones to disappear. Rustbolt's Powered Armor is magnetic, and he's immobilized by a scrapyard magnet. The Smash is strong and durable, but being hit by a Nigh-Invulnerable Wall-Knight at high speeds overcomes that. Brain Freeze's ice powers can freeze the Plant Heroes, but isn't so hot against Solar Flare. Electric Boogaloo's disco dance-fueled electric powers get thrown off-beat when the Plant Heroes change the music genre. Immorticia's zombie-summoning bat familiars are still small, fragile animals and can be easily wrapped up with toilet paper.
  • For the Plants: Spudow can detach his head to turn it into a high-power explosive while immediately regenerating a new head, so Super Brainz uses his cape to tie Spudow's head onto his body so he can't pull it off. Wall-Knight is Nigh-Invulnerable but not immovable, so the Zombie Heroes hit him away like a ball to prevent his interference. Rose's Goatify spells take the form of Transformation Rays, and a mirror is enough to deflect them back to her. Chompzilla's ability to eat zombies whole doesn't work if her mouth is frozen shut by Brain Freeze. Nightcap's mushroom swarm summons get fried by Professor Brainstorm's chain lightning device. Captain Combustible's Super-Empowering ability via the flames on his head can't be used if those flames are put out by water.
• Alex Mercer of [PROTOTYPE], due to the way his offensive and defensive abilities are set up, and the fact that he absorbs people and thus incorporates their mass into his own, is literally too dense to swim. This is apparently true of everything that gets infected with either Redlight or Blacklight and is mutated, given that none of them survive being pushed into the drink. Though he can jump off the bottom of the East River because he sinks nearly as fast as he falls, but then again this applies to everything in the game, infected or not. Anything not capable of jumping like that dies instantly on contact with water.
  • However, despite his immense mass he can still glide along a decent distance. The in-game description states that he ejects biomass, propelling him in a slight upward trajectory. It also leads to some rather nasty Fridge Horror about the infection.
• In Quake, using the Lightning Gun while in water is a bad idea.^note You get a silly Have a Nice Death message if you do.
• The Combat Triangle of RuneScape nominally works this way. An armored melee fighter resists ranged attacks but is vulnerable to magic because metal armor conducts spells. Lightly-armored rangers can dodge magic attacks, but melee attacks go right through. Since mages wear only robes, they are vulnerable to piercing ranged attacks, but can prevent melee attackers from ever reaching them. Hybrid armor has none of these weaknesses, but also none of their strengths.
  • Exploiting this is also how you figure out how to kill Vampyres. The stronger Vyre can read peoples' minds to predict and avoid attacks. Like with Eneru in the Anime and Manga page, it doesn't do any good if the enemy has no idea where their attacks are going. The first method of getting past this is with a flail, since flails are extremely difficult for even experienced users to control, and therefore the wielder will have no exploitable knowledge of where the attack will come from. Weapons made of Blisterwood also bypass the mind reading by changing shape frequently outside of the wielder's control.
• In the Persona series, calling a Persona requires the summoner to speak the Persona's name. There is an ailment called "silence" which prevents the target from using spells, because spells require your Persona, which you can't call if you can't make a sound. Persona 5's "Forgetfulness" ailment fulfills the same purpose, since despite being able to speak the summoner cannot remember their Persona's name to call it out.
  • The protagonists of Persona 5 must know someone's name in order to find their shadow and steal their heart in the metaverse, with more information being required to infiltrate the palaces of especially loathsome individuals. So when the group goes after a secretive mob boss they are initially unable to do much, and later, when they are targeted by a group of anonymous hackers, they are completely unable to retaliate and must recruit an expert hacker.
  • The weaknesses of many of the Personas themselves are based on their actual mythological stories. For instance, Yusuke Kitagawa's Persona Goemon is weak to fire because the original Goemon was boiled to death. The Persona Messiah is weak to dark (an instant-kill element) because his purpose is to sacrifice himself.
• In Rayman, the titular protagonist has Floating Limbs which really let him reach out and punch baddies and bestow him with impressive agility, but if he somehow loses his hands then he is helpless until he manages to retrieve them again. This happens to him at least three times, in the first game, in Hoodlum Havoc, and in Raving Rabbids.
• Soul Sacrifice describes the weaknesses of several Archfiends in their Librom entries. Quite a few of them make sense. The Harpy, as one example, was originally a massively overweight noblewoman; as an Archfiend, she's weak to fire because of how combustible fat is.
• In Spec Ops: The Line, sometimes you have to get past a machine gun nest but aren't given flashbangs. Well, those gunners need a line of sight to shoot you, explosions tend to kick up a godawful amount of dust, normal grenades are plentiful, and there's sand everywhere. Do the math.
• StarCraft:
  • The Overmind and its brood leaders, the Cerebrates, are all technically immortal; once they've received fatal damage, their tissue regenerates over a period of time and makes them whole again. However, their one weakness is Void Energy — the same energy used to create them — which is also utilized by the exiled Protoss Dark Templar. The energy causes them great physical and mental harm, and completely prevents their tissues from regenerating. The energy is powerful enough to even shock the Overmind vicariously through its cerebrates.
  • StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void — It turns out that The Khala, the greatest unifying force of modern Protoss society, is tainted by the fallen Xel'Naga Amon. He uses the Khala's telepathic links to corrupt the Protoss to do his bidding. Only by severing their nerve cords, like the Dark Templar have ritualistically done, can they be free and fight, though at the cost of feeling spiritually and emotionally isolated.
• Stellaris: weapons are roughly balanced like this: energy weapons are particularly effective against armor, but weak against deflector shields; kinetic weapons are effective against shields, but weak against armor; missiles ignore shields and armor, but are vulnerable to point defense systems. This can cause battles with fleets of equivalent power in terms of size to have vastly different outcomes depending on the loadout. Since fallen empires, leviathans and crisis factions always use specific combos, players can easily re-design and refit their fleets to exploit any enemy weakness (e.g. the Prethoryn Scourge is heavily using missiles, has very armored ships and no shields, thus they are very vulnerable to any fleet using point defense and lasers).
• String Tyrant: The stranger is an unstoppable pursuer made of glass. How does Mary ultimately stop them? She rings a giant bell and lets the reverberations break it to shards.
• In Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Ultimate, Little Mac is an absolute beast when fighting on the ground, as befitting his Boxing Battler status; but the fact that he's a boxer means that his air combat is subpar at best, being barely able to land a punch or jump back to the battlefield.
• In Total War: Warhammer:
  • Bretonnia is a kingdom that could be described as King Arthur gone wrong. Their army is built around Magic Knights on horseback, so while they do have a frankly superb cavalry selection, everything else in the army is subpar — their peasant infantry are too skittish and lightly armored to be a reliable battle line, their archers can't reliably penetrate armor at range, they only have trebuchets for artillery support and their magic game is really nothing to write home about either. This means they can be very effective in open battle on plains, where the Bretonnian knights can fully utilize their mobility, but in sieges they suffer greatly... cavalry can't climb the walls, you see, so the job of taking them falls to the sub-standard infantry. In a grand conquest game like this, this means that Bretonnian factions have great difficulty in taking and holding territory as a result. The optional Peasant Reserve system adds another detail; as a feudal kingdom without a professional army, having too many peasant units causes economic penalties as they're out being the Redshirt Army rather than working the fields.
  • The Dwarfs are a daunting opponent on paper for many reasons: they are all the Pint-Sized Powerhouse, every single Dwarf is a trained fighter from the lowliest goat cheese merchant to the High King himself, and not only do they have some of the most advanced technology in the setting but they also go to war decked out in some of the finest weapons and armor in the Old World. However that heavy armour (as well as their short legs) means they are slow, and since their armies are also small, they can be easily flanked or enveloped. Being so slow also makes them vulnerable to cavalry, artillery, and chariots; they have no cavalry themselves and their only unit that is effective at fighting cavalry are a mob of crazed Death Seekers who go into battle shirtless (after all armor is only worn by people who want to survive) and so drop like flies when the cavalry counter-charge them. Finally their precious armor doesn't offer any protection against enemies with an Armour Piercing Attack, like Empire Handgunners or Orc Big 'Uns. This extends to the competitive multiplayer, as these traits make the Dwarfs the Poor, Predictable Rock of the Metagame; anyone fighting a Dwarf army simply takes more units with armor piercing qualities as a precaution, and Dwarf players can't avoid this because all of their units are vulnerable to it.
  • Monsters and Monstrous Infantry. They are usually very fast as well as very strong, and their heavy mass and devastating effects on enemy morale make them fantastic linebreakers. However Monsters also tend to be very large and thus an inviting target for artillery and missile troops, and can be easily shot at while they're tied up in melee combat without harming the infantry due to their height. Carelessly throwing these units deep into enemy infantry also subjects them to being surrounded, and one of the game's mechanics amplifies all melee damage coming from the sides and rear of any unit.
  • Related to the above, no army can bring as many giant monsters as the Warriors of Chaos can... and they are also very expensive in an Elite Army where powerful but pricey infantry are the order of the day. Consequently, Warriors of Chaos nearly always fight outnumbered. Also while the devotion of the Warriors to their Chaos Gods makes them fearless in battle, it also brings them issues with mass routs — each Warrior is only concerned with their own personal glory, and only a charismatic warlord capable of convincing them that he is favoured by the Dark Gods can make them set aside their feuds with each other and bring them together; if this warlord falls in battle, then the warriors following him will be convinced that the warlord offended the Chaos Gods somehow and swiftly lost their favor, and their peerless convictions will melt like midsummer snow cause them to flee the field.
• In Undertale, Undyne is an anthropomorphic fish woman wearing a full set of plate armor. She starts fighting the player in the cool and wet area of Waterfall, and she's absolutely relentless while in the area. When she chases you into the significantly hotter Hotland, she doesn't get too far before overheating and collapsing into unconsciousness. In an interesting inversion, you can revive her by pouring water on her.
• In Valheim, Stone Golems are resistant to most forms of physical damage. However, they aren't resistant to blunt damage from hammers and the like, and pickaxes in particular deal double damage.
• Warframe: The Sentients have a very strange structural design theme that literally revolves around a single point where their power core is located, creating arches around them that can be used as weapon platforms. The Tenno exploit this to kill Hunhow; once they get through his other defenses, the only thing that keeps his core protected is his arch, which their Warframes can easily pry open.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  • Mythra's Foresight ability allows her to predict how her enemies are going to move and attack. Most of the time, this serves to make her nearly untouchable since she always knows exactly what her opponent is doing. However, it proves completely useless against Jin due to his incredible Super-Speed — his attacks are so fast that Mythra physically can't react fast enough to stop them, even though she sees them coming.
  • Blades don't produce magic on their own, but draw it from a Background Magic Field. So naturally, anything that removes ether particles from the atmosphere chokes them of their powers. Examples include Obrona's ether manipulation, a custom anti-Driver prison, Jin's ability to rob the area of thermodynamic energy, or the ether-adsorbing particles in the Spirit Crucible.
  • As a weakness of a weakness, Poppi produces her own ether internally from her Black Box, rendering her immune to many of these.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X:
  • Large enemies and machines are especially vulnerable to gravity-based attacks. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, after all. In addition, wearing bulky armor reduces your defenses against gravity attacks — it's heavy, after all.
  • Insectoids and Theroids are often vulnerable to thermal attacks. Living beings are vulnerable to Kill It with Fire, which makes sense.
• Zombies Ate My Neighbors is built quite a bit around this. There are a slew of weapons and most of them seem like Powerup Letdowns until you put two-and-two together and figure out what enemy they work on. The fire-extinguisher and popsicles freezes blobs solid, weed whackers utterly obliterate the plant enemies and their Alien Kudzu, silverware kills the werewolf in one hit, and of course the bazooka and flamethrower, being actual weapons, are strong against everything.

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