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Basic Trope: A powerful looking attack that inflicts relatively minor damage.

  • Straight: Chaos Emperor unleashes his final attack, a massive energy blast capable of obliterating great land extensions, upon Magic Knight Alion. He manages to survive it with only some mild damage.
  • Exaggerated: Chaos Emperor's final attack consists in opening a fissure into the space and time continuum that sends his opponent into a pocket dimension were he (or she) is bombarded by the concentrated energy of a thousand suns. Alion appears to be perfectly fine and is cursing about that stupid Scratch Damage rule.
  • Downplayed: Chaos Emperor's final attack is a giant firestorm, Alion's armour takes the brunt of the attack and is quite damaged , while Alion himself suffered some mild burns.
  • Justified:
    • Because of his Magic Knight formation, Alion knows powerful defensive spells capable of reducing, or even nullifying, the destructive effects of Chaos Emperor's magic.
    • Alion JUST received a few magic charms on his quest to help lower the damage of these specific techniques.
    • Most of those attacks are mere illusions.
    • The attacks are extremely damaging to the environment, but both Chaos Emperor and Alion are Physical Gods.
    • Alion in Made of Iron/Nigh-Invulnerability.
    • The Chaos Emperor has absolutely horrendous control which makes lethal SuperPowerMeltdowns look like ornate and elegant acts of nanometer precise control. Most of the energy goes into brutalizing the landscape instead of against Alion.
    • The Chaos Emperor is an example of Good Powers, Bad People, and his Holy Hand Grenade attack innately spares righteous people to some extent.
  • Inverted: A weak looking attack that inflicts severe (even fatal) damage upon a character up to and including Ludicrous Gibs.
  • Subverted: Alion appears to be mostly unaffected by Chaos Emperor attack, but at a crucial point in the battle he suddenly collapses because of the massive internal organ damage inflicted by said attack.
  • Double Subverted: ...and then Alion gets up again, because he can regenerate as long as a single cell remains.
  • Parodied:
    • It's explicitly stated in the series that damage from attacks are inversely proportional in regards to the attacks' coolness.
    • The Chaos Emperor's final attack (a gigantic wave of energy), vs Tales of Troperia mainstay Claidheamh the Left Handed Brute and his trusty Claymore (And it's early game Claidheamh and not the Rival Final Boss Claidheamh). The result? Claidheamh cleaves the blast wide open, while simultaneously making an air blast that tears through the Chaos Emperor.
  • Zig Zagged: The attack creates a lot of heat but is dissipated by the arctic they happen to be fighting in, but it melts the ice caps which cause global flooding, but this only gets Alions boots wet.
  • Averted: Extremely powerful looking attacks are fatal, regardless of the statistics of the character hit by them.
  • Enforced: "We need to have flashy attacks to draw the player in, but we can't just outright kill him."
  • Lampshaded: "Well, that didn't hurt much, for a meteor shower."
  • Invoked:
    • Chaos Emperor makes sure to hold back on his flashy attacks so his fights are more fun.
    • The Chaos Emperor decided to apply illusions to make all of his attacks look incredibly lethal so his foes don't know if he is going to slap them across the face or destroy the world.
  • Exploited: Chaos Emperor uses this attack to distract Alion while he uses an attack that will be guaranteed to kill him.
  • Defied: Chaos Emperor burns all books that contain spells that are flashy, but weaker than they should be.
  • Discussed: "Why are your attacks so cool looking, but so weak comparatively?" "I have a book of spells with strong attacks, but they weren't cool enough."
  • Conversed: "Wait, why the fuck didn't Alion die?" "Because then the fight would be impossible."
  • Deconstructed:
    • The attack causes a truly massive amount of Collateral Damage.
    • Alion survives the initial explosion, but is poisoned by radioactive fallout, because the weapon was a dirty bomb or sorts.
  • Reconstructed: The collateral damage causes a building to fall on Alion.

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