Sequential Boss / Role-Playing Game

• Baten Kaitos combines this with the Dual Boss to have you fight the three generals all at the same time — and then again immediately afterwards with no time to heal/save.
• In BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm, nearly all of the late-game bosses have multiple phases – usually two or three, but sometimes as many as four.
  • The Piece of Legion is an Asteroids Monster that splits in half each time you defeat it, gradually turning from a singular enemy into a Wolf Pack Boss.
  • The Scrapped Avatars also start the battle as a unit, before desyncing and fighting you as five separate foes.
  • Wolfram ALPHA has to be fought piece-by-piece – first his legs, then his arms, and finally his head and shoulder-mounted turrets.
  • When you finally fight Arianna, she morphs through four different forms as the First Internet code corrupts her into a monster. In the third stage, she briefly regains control, just long enough to heal you before unleashing her final transformation.
  • The final boss, STORM, has to be chased and fought three times as it tries to escape, with each phase separated by a minigame. (First an Unexpected Shmup Level, and then a vertical platforming challenge).
• The Chrono series:
  • In Chrono Trigger, Masa and Mune are fought as individual entities at first, only to fuse into one big monster in the latter half of the fight.
  • Slash, one of Magus's top henchmen, first attacks unarmed, but when defeated, eqips his sword, which makes the second portion of the battle significantly harder.
    Slash: (at the beginning of the second stage) Now, let's get to business.
  • Magus himself starts off the battle in his infamous Barrier Change mode, only to later discard it and just begin constantly casting Dark Matter, his most powerful spell.
  • Near the end of the game you fight Queen Zeal. At first you should take her out in her plain human form, then get the Mammoth Machine out of the way, and then deal with Zeal's One-Winged Angel form. And then, of course, there's Lavos, the Final Boss consisting of four different stages: a Boss Rush, a plain Lavos shell fight, then two fights with its Outer and Inner Cores respectively.
  • Chrono Cross features the Dragon God/Fused Dragons, who has seven different forms (though they all look the same): one form for each Elemental Color in the game, except White, which gets two forms.
• Dark Souls has Ornstein and Smough, who start out as a Dual Boss. When you kill one of them, the other one absorbs their power to bring themselves back to full health and gain some of their fallen partner's abilities. Smough's hammer becomes charged with lightning and his butt-stomp, which used to be your best chance to run in and get some damage on him, now creates a highly damaging lightning shockwave with a surprisingly large radius. Ornstein becomes giant, gains a lightning butt-stomp of his own (with a smaller radius), and can now use a grab attack that is guaranteed to be a One-Hit Kill to anyone who doesn't have tons of health or lightning resistance.
• Dark Souls III has a couple. The first being the Abyss Watchers, who are fought as a Wolf Pack Boss (no pun intended) during the first phase where the player has to kill them all while they fight amongst themselves. Then after that a cutscene plays where a single Watcher absorbs the blood of his brothers, wreathing his sword in flame and becoming more of a proper boss. Later on is the King of Storms, a massive drake with a knight riding on top of it. After the drake is killed the knight steps off of it, absorbs it to gain lightning powers and reveals his true title, the Nameless King, and proves that he is far stronger than when was riding on his dragon mount. Then there is the Final Boss The Soul of Cinder who uses a variety of different movesets during his first phase, such as that of a knight, a pyromancer, a sorcerer, and others. Then when he first seems defeated he stands back up three familiar notes play, and he becomes an improved version of the Final Boss of the first game, Gwyn, Lord of Cinder.
• The final boss of Digital Devil Saga 2 has five different forms, each aligned with a different element.
• Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten spoofs this with Death King Hugo. After defeating him, Valvatorez warns the party that they shouldn't bother to celebrate, because there's at least two One-Winged Angel transformations coming up. It's then subverted, as Hugo admits to having lost the strength to do the requisite transformations long ago.
• .hack has Corbenik, who may well take the cake for most bizarre forms ever: he starts out as a giant seed, then he turns into a leaf, and when that doesn't work he becomes a Giant Eye of Doom.
• The Dragon Quest series is even more fond of this than the Final Fantasy series; three of the first four Big Bads were sequential boss fights.
  • In the original Dragon Quest game for the NES, when you first fight the Dragonlord, he has a humanoid appearance. When you beat him, he morphs into his much tougher true dragon form.
  • In the final boss level of Dragon Quest III (or Dragon Warrior III in the states), first the party must fight Barabombus, with heavy defense but weak attack, then Baragonus, with high attack and no defense, then the party must face Zoma, the Final Boss (though you can fight several heretofore unreferenced bosses when you beat the game once).
  • Dragon Quest IV is the most iconic example of this entire trope, with the final fight against Necrosaro, a seven-part boss battle where he starts by looking like prior boss Estark, only for the player to hack off his arms one by one, followed by his head, after which he simply grows a new face on his stomach, and regrows all his limbs...including his head. Needless to say, nearly every change to his body corresponds to changes in his tactics.
• Enchanted Arms makes its Final Boss (the Infinity Devil Golem) go through at least three forms. It also has a Healing Factor.
• The Final Fantasy series seems fond of these, having them for practically every Final Boss starting with Final Fantasy IV.
  • Final Fantasy IV later on barely has any bosses fought on their own or just once. Two of the Fiends have you fight their minions right before them, as does Golbez when you first fight him for real. The Fiend Boss Rush, as well.
  • Archeoavis from Final Fantasy V is an interesting example. It appears as if he only has two forms - his only noticeable form change happens towards the end when he dies and comes back to life. However, if you keep careful watch of his health with Scan or use a particular instant death spell that surprisingly works on him, you'll realize that he actually has four forms. The other two forms are easy to miss because they all use the exact same sprite, and when one form is killed, there is no visual indication that it has died (except for the aforementioned last form).
  • Kefka of Final Fantasy VI has four forms, the first three having Cognizant Limbs.
  • The final boss fight of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth kicks off with six whole phases against Jenova Lifeclinger: Cloud and two team members who'll get ejected from the fight; Cloud and two team members again; Tifa and one team member; Barret and one team member; Cloud and one team member; and finally Cloud and two team members once more. The fight segues into Cloud and Zack teaming up against Sephiroth — the two overwhelm Sephy who opts for splitting up their team by cleaving the timeline, banishing Zack in the process, whereupon he transforms, initiating the four phase fight against Sephiroth Reborn: The first round stars Cloud; a minute sideways into the present, the main team have to deal with Sephiroth Reborn and Bahamut Arisen; following this we rejoin Zack in his timeline where he has to deal with his own Sephiroth Reborn; once done with that we go back to the main team again who, with Bahamut Arisen taken care of, can now focus their attention on properly dealing with Sephiroth Reborn. And then, finally, we've got one last showdown featuring Cloud and Aerith going up against Sephiroth.
  • Ultimecia, the Final Boss from Final Fantasy VIII, starts relatively normal and quickly moves into sheer insanity. The distinct stages of the battle: 1) Fights our heroes in human form after mixing up what party members Squall fights alongside, 2) Summons her badass Guardian Force to duke it out with you, 3) orders said Guardian Force to show you his true power, gaining new abilities and Awesome Music, 4) merges with said Guardian Force, 5) continues to attack you after having her new body chopped down to nearly-human size, 6) appears to die, only to reappear in One-Winged Angel form, and finally 7) the One-Winged Angel form with an ultimate attack (though not terribly ultimate, really). Even by the standards of Square Enix, the fight sets a new level for sheer spectacle, not matched again until Kingdom Hearts II.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • Seymour Guado's first fight against the party is one of these. First he starts as a Flunky Boss (said flunkies have the annoying habit of tossing Hi-Potions when anyone on their side is hurt) who will constantly cast powerful — for that point — elemental magic on your party, then he'll whip out Anima once the flunkies are dead and he's at 50% HP, and once she's dead, he'll start using the -ga level spells, which are a guaranteed One-Hit Kill on anyone who isn't Lulu or using Nul-Spells. After this, he'll finally go down.
    • Lady Yunalesca (not the Final Boss, but arguably the game's toughest Climax Boss) comes in three forms. First, she will pull out some very low-level attacks, cast drain spells on your party members, and counter all attacks with Blind (physical), Silence (magical), or Sleep (special — e.g. Steal or Overdrives). Her second form becomes a little more monstrous, then alternates between spamming Zombie and Cure magic. Afterwards, she transforms into her monstrous third form, and opens by casting Mega-Death, killing all but the Zombie-afflicted party members, then she will cycle through healing magic, zombie attacks, an attack that afflicts the party with a cocktail of ailments (including confusion!), drain, osmose, and occasionally, Mega-Death again. And, overall, she has 132,000 HP. Have fun, kids.
    • The party launches a full-scale assault on Sin's outer shell, weakening it by destroying the three power cores on its arms and back. All three fights are played in a row, with no chance to heal and with your positive status effects (i.e. Haste) not carrying over.
    • After the final Point of No Return, you face Braska's Final Aeon, all of Yuna's Aeons, and Yu Yevon in a row. The former is a large threat, but the latter 6 (9 if you got the optional Aeons) fights are a Foregone Victory due to permanent Auto-Life status.
• Uncle Rupee in Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland has a normal form, a green powered up form, an orange powered up form, a red powered up form, and finally a giant rupee head form.
• Golden Sun:
  • At the end of the first game, you must first fight Saturos and Menardi and then, after a short (by Golden Sun standards) cut scene, fight the two of them combined into a two-headed dragon. The inability to heal or replenish PP in between battles is the main reason the second battle is difficult at all, with the actual boss being weaker than the ones that proceed it.
  • The Doom Dragon at the end of the second game is secretly a Sequential Boss, even if there's seemingly no interruption in the battle: Killing one of its heads actually replaces it with the version with one less head (so three phases total) to waste any further damage, as a counter to many players' Alpha Strike strategy of firing off every summon they have to one-shot or two-shot bosses.
• Kingdom Hearts: Considering it's a Square Enix series, you kinda have to see it coming.
  • The final battle against Ansem in the first game has seven stages (all but the first three involving a thunder-spamming phallic face monster), or ten if you include the fights with the Heartless to get your comrades back. And you can't save between the fights. To wit: first you fight Ansem with your entire party. Then he summons Darkside, who Sora fights alone, and then he fights Sora (still alone) in the same form as before with a couple of new attacks. Then he goes One-Winged Angel, and everything from there is a Battleship Raid against a monstrous living spaceship with a super-sized Ansem growing out of it.
  • Marluxia has two in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and is given a third in the remake. Marluxia is notably the only member of Organization XIII besides Xemnas himself to have multiple stages, which is, of course, because he's the final boss of his game.
  • Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts II. Right after the first stage of the fight (where you duel him while he's Dual Wielding Laser Blades), you have time to save and go elsewhere afterward, but it's completely back-to-back from then on. First there's the rush to Xemnas's floating fortress thing, then the two turbines, then the core, then Armored King Xemnas, wielding the weapons of the Org. XIII members that appear in this game, then an attack on Xemnas' dragon-shaped Humongous Mecha in rail-shooter style, then another round with Armored King Xemnas (dropping many of his attacks for kickass skyscraper-destroying sequences), then finally one final fight with Xemnas himself, in Twilight form.
  • The fight with Xion in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days has four stages. First, a winged armor in Wonderland. Second, a giant form in Halloween Town. Third, a four-armed version with four swords in Agrabah. And finally a titanic armor in the skies of Twilight Town.
  • Each episode of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep finishes with a sequential boss of some sort. Terra first fights Master Xehanort and Vanitas together, then Master Xehanort alone, then Xehanort possessing Terra's body for the final battle. Ventus fights Vanitas, then fights him again, only unmasked and wielding the X-Blade. Aqua fights Braig followed by Ventus-Vanitas. Finally, the True Final Boss of the game as a whole has two forms - Terra-Xehanort, and Terra-Xehanort with the Guardian. Aside from final bosses, there's also Zack in Terra's story, who after his first battle removes his helmet and becomes That One Boss for another round.
  • Kingdom Hearts coded's final boss is the only one in the series that isn't a Sequential Boss, but Sora's Heartless easily makes up for this with five forms: a Darkside, a dark version of Sora, several dark versions of Sora, several more dark versions of Sora, and finally, a Shadow that's a Zero-Effort Boss.
  • Riku faces a trio of boss fights at the end of Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], first going up against the Anti Black Coat Nightmare, followed by Ansem and his One-Winged Angel form.
  • While he doesn't go through any major transformations like his Heartless and his Nobody, Master Xehanort also pulls this trick in the final battle of Kingdom Hearts III. First, a fight against twelve Replica Xehanorts (which thankfully share their HP) all across the city of Scala Ad Caelum. Then Xehanort merges with the replicas to form Armored Xehanort, who is first fought in Scala Ad Caelum folded into a cage, then in the sea below the town, and then an aerial battle in what remains of the town. His armor broken, all that remains is a battle against Master Xehanort, armed with the X-Blade and Kingdom Hearts itself.
• Klonoa Heroes: Densetsu no Star Medal:
  • Flower Joka switches back-and-forth between his normal form and a serpentine form as he takes damage.
  • Garlen's bug-like mech has two back-to-back phases.
  • Nahatomb has three different phases with breaks for saving the game: a humanoid armored figure on a throne, a monstrous heart and a giant dragon-like form. On the final one he revives himself several times like the player can do, with less HP every time he does it.
• Knights of the Old Republic,
  • Rulan Prolik - if you accept Hulas' assassination contracts - takes no less than three separate forms: first, he impersonates your companion Jolee Bindo to battle you sword to sword; once you've knocked his health down far enough, he'll become a terentatek to try and crush you with raw muscle; finally, he'll flee and pretend to be a tach, forcing you to butcher your way through an entire troop of the monkey-like creatures to kill him.
  • Played with in the final battle with Darth Malak. After storming his personal space station (which is huge), you fight through the expected mooks, and a boss battle with Bastilla just before finally facing Darth Malak himself. He has a few tricks up his sleeves, though — namely a group of 8 pods containing captive Jedi. Whenever you get close to killing him, he will go drain one of them, and come back with full health and force power, giving him eight lives with which to fight you with. This would be VERY aggravating... if you couldn't use them too.
• The Last Story: Dagran, whose evil side is revealed after you defeat Zangurak, has three phases in the Final Boss battle, and in each his size and threat level increase considerably.
• The Legend of Dragoon went a little crazy with its Sequential Boss. Minor bosses like Urobolus and Doel have a few forms. Melbu Frahma goes through six generations, four of which fight back hard, and still needs a cutscene to actually die.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:
  • The final battle has three phases. Round 1 sees the team face-off against a Panzer Soldat, and the last two phases has has Rean board the Ashen Knight to square off against S & C.
  • In the second game, on top of facing members of Zephyr and Ouroboros, you'll be going against a brutal final boss, before heading into the game's 2nd intermission. 1) Rean and team will face Crow and Vita. 2) Rean challenges Crow to a Divine Knight battle. 3) Rean and team will be split into groups A & B squaring off with a helpless Cedric in his Vermillion Apocalypse mech. 4) Crow and Rean join forces to take care of the Vermillion Apocalypse in their Divine Knights.
  • In Cold Steel III, the dragon boss under Heimdallr has at least two forms: Old Class VII and New Class VII combine to form three groups. The first gets the dragon down to 70% health, the second to 40%, and the third gets it down to zero. This isn't enough to finish it, so you then fight against it in mechs. Now it's dead. Then a human enemy shows up, and you fight him too.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky has this in the 2nd game. The fighters will have to face Weissmann in his fallen angel form twice, with the 2nd bout involving a tail attaching itself to him.
• Lost Odyssey The final fight has three phases. First the Luminous Magic Beast. Followed by Gongora's normal form. Once the team takes down this phase, Jansen and the rest will shield Kaim and Sarah from the light mirror at the risk of their own life.
• Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis features a combination of Flunky Boss and Sequential Boss. Frequently in the Sidequests, some Bosses are fought this way, where the player has to fight through a sequence of normal enemies before the Boss. For an example in the storyline, there's the very first Boss who is fought in the same way.
• Mario & Luigi:
  • The final boss of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga has two forms, but you begin the second form with 1 HP on each of your characters.
  • The final battles of Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time are also sequential; first you fight Princess Shroob herself, followed by the two forms of the Elder Princess Shroob.
  • Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story has a variation of this with the final boss, alternating between Bowser and the Bros. at least twice.
  • Mario & Luigi: Dream Team has Wiggler and Popple, two opponents fought directly after one another. Unlike many other examples, though, the latter boss is the easier one, so you should use your best items and attacks then instead of waiting for the second battle.
  • Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam has the two Bowsers as the final boss, followed by the two transforming into Shiny RoboBowser.
• Mega Man Battle Network series:
  • Anytime enemy navis decided to gang up on the player, they have each battle after the last one is killed. While HP isn't restored, used chips are returned to the player's folder (which is done anyways after every fight). Disappointingly, the series never has two navis fought at the same time.
  • The Final Boss of Battle Network 3. Bass with 1000 HP, a shield that can only be taken off with an attack that does at least 100 damage in one go and restores itself fairly quickly, and some extremely devastating attacks; immediately followed by Alpha, also having 2000 hp, a regenerating barrier that absorbs damage before allowing Alpha's actual HP to be depleted, and some equally devastating attacks. The only thing between the two of them is a single cutscene, no healing, no saving, right back into the action.
• Monster Hunter. Sequential bosses are rare in the series (at most, you usually only have a regular large monster that attacks in a measured manner, then more quickly as it gets angry, and then sparingly as it gets tired), but they exist:
  • Lao-Shan Lung, Shen Gaoren, Ceadeus, Jhen Mohran and Dah'ren Mohran all have an initial phase where they merely walk or swim around the corresponding threatened areas while attacking occasionally, and then a final phase where they attack you more actively. Failure to protect the area they're intending to destroy leads to a Nonstandard Game Over, but you can drive them away if you manage to inflict enough damage to them before time runs out. This also applies to Ashen Lao-Shan Lung and Hallowed Jhen Mohran, but not Goldbeard Ceadeus (it has only one phase, but it's a Marathon Boss that cannot be repeled).
  • Amatsu, Dalamadur, Gogmazios, Nakarkos and Ahtal-Ka all have two or more phases, changing their attack patterns as the respective fights evolve, and confront the hunter in one secluded area instead of multiple segmented areas. None of them can be repeled either (save for the first encounter against Nakarkos), so you must slay them before time runs out or you will fail.
• In the Mother series:
  • EarthBound (1994):
    • The second boss, Franky. After admitting defeat, he immediately sends in his creation, Frankystein Mark II, to finish you off. It's worth noting that, as the first real boss in the game (Starman Junior is a gimme, since you have Buzz Buzz), the Franky/Frankystein Mark II fight is designed to deliberately pull its punches after the first phase, seeing as Ness is likely in bad shape from Franky, and the player is probably inexperienced. Frankystein attacks less often and you can usually get in enough good hits to win before taking two hits from its stronger attack. You can also fight Frankystein again if it beats you without having to refight Franky, which makes this debatably not this trope, as the difficulty of having to fight them both in sequence goes away if beat Franky once.
    • The last Sanctuary Guardian, Carbon Dog, transforms into Diamond Dog after taking enough damage.
    • The final fight has three forms, the first against Giygas and Porky together, but Giygas has a permanent Shield-PSI Shield Beta combo up, being the only enemy in the game with one up, forcing you to attack Porky. After beating him, he attempts to scare the party to death by deactivating the shield and letting Giygas attack. The next two forms are just against Giygas, but with different attack methods.
  • In Mother 3, the last three bosses all play with this. The Porky Bots use three different attack formations to defeat the party. The first is an all out assault, and then the second have them come one at a time while summoning weak enemies. The third formation is a Cutscene Boss. The Final Boss, Porky Minch himself. has one regular form, then a second form that ends immediately after two turns. The Post-Final Boss, the Masked Man, now revealed to be Claus, starts regaining his memories later on in the fight, lowering his stats.
• The final book of Odin Sphere, Armageddon, is a series of five boss fights. Good thing there's five playable characters, huh?
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, you fight Grodus directly before Bowser, with no chance to heal. Fortunately, leveling up in between restores your health entirely and there is a third boss right after (with two stages), but at least you get the chance to heal and save (or even go back out and do some sidequests) before you tackle that one.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne: Yoyogi Park has two bosses back to back; Sakahagi sics Girimekhala on you, and then takes you on himself after it fails to finish you off. You get no chance to heal in between the two, but fortunately, Sakahagi isn't as hard as Girimekhala, and can easily be taken down in two turns.
  • Nocturne also has Ahriman and Baal Avatar in the final dungeon, the former of which disables certain moves before shifting into a normal battle and the latter of which summons two minions to heal and support her. Interestingly, the second one's second form can be completely skipped if one does enough damage in the first form, as the second form starts with Baal Avatar being fully healed by one of the minions. Subverted with Noah and Final Boss Kagutsuchi - while they have impressive form changes and gain quite a bit of HP (Kagutsuchi in particular has more HP than anyone else except the True Final Boss), they barely change between forms.
  • The final boss of Persona 3 has a whopping fourteen forms (not counting the human form the main characters knew him as earlier in the game). While the first thirteen forms are relatively easy to defeat (differing mainly in their elemental weaknesses), the final form is quite difficult and can take at least half an hour to defeat for those who aren't using some sort of Game-Breaker.
  • The fight against Masayohsi Shido in Persona 5 is the longest fight in the game, having a total of 5 phases with each having a lot of HP, though his first 3 phases is just fighting The Beast of Human Sacrifice, which later transforms into a bird, which transforms into a pyramid.
• Pokémon:
  • The Elite Four and Champion battles at the end of every game.
  • Pokémon Black and White tops the other games with a sequence of Elite Four, the legendary dragon of your version, then the final two bosses, N and Ghetsis. You don't go near the League Champion until you face the Elite Four a second time. You do get to heal at times though.
  • At least those let you save in between battles; Pokémon Ranger doesn't even give you that. Made even worse by the fact that Entei, the Final Boss, is so hard that it would still be nearly impossible to beat even if your health hadn't been drained by Raikou and Suicune.
  • And those Legendary Beasts are at the end of the game. Shadows of Almia has that bloody Drapion, before you get Steel-type Poke Assists, and he is preceded by two Rhyhorn and then three Stunky.
  • In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, first there's Pokémon Wielder Volo and his full party bordering Level 70. Immediately after, you fight Altered Forme Giratina at Level 70. Once you take its health down to zero, it goes One-Winged Angel and now you have to start over with Origin Forme Giratina. No between-battle healing or Master Ball to save you this time.
• Rogue Galaxy's final boss has a lot of forms. Mother has two forms, then the Demon Battleship has EIGHT separate battles, one-on-one duels between every member of your party and one part of the final boss. If you screw up even ONCE, you have to do the whole damn thing all over again. ARGH.
• In the original SNES release of Romancing SaGa, you have to fight the final boss's minions one by one and then fight all three at once — all in the same place before confronting the final boss. In the PS2 remake, you only have to fight one battle near the final boss's chamber — unless you defeated them all individually in the final dungeon to get their treasures. Furthermore, the final boss is sequential in the remake only.
• SaGa Frontier has several of these, most notably Lute's final boss: a giant mech that slowly falls apart as you fight it. Others include Blue's fight with Satan (who continually switches between two different forms) and T260's battle with Genocide Heart. The sub-boss fights in Red's story where the party goes to an alternate dimension may also count.
• Skies of Arcadia's three final bosses are like this, with a variation — the first and third forms are fought on foot, while the middle form is a ship battle.
• Super Mario RPG:
  • You fight Smithy at the end, then a stronger version of Smithy.
  • There is also the Czar Dragon, who changes from a typical fire dragon to a skeletal dragon after you beat on him enough.
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Graces has two of them: In the penultimate dungeon, you have to fight Lambda Richard and then Emeraude. Lambda Richard is That One Boss, but Emeraude is surprisingly easy, despite her constant teleporting around. Then in the final dungeon you first fight Lambda Richard (again) and finally Lambda Angelus.
  • Tales of Symphonia:
    • The game contains a rather infamous string of three sequential bosses at the climax of its fake ending (in actuality only about a third of the way through the game.) First up is Remiel, who tries to eliminate the party after sealing Colette's soul. He's reasonably challenging, but no harder than an average boss up until that point. Once you deal with him, Kratos reappears just in time to announce that he's been stringing you along the whole time and that he intends to deliver Colette to his superiors. While not set up as a Hopeless Boss Fight, he would be extremely difficult to overcome with a fresh party, let alone one that's just finished a previous boss fight. Then, just to add insult to injury, whether or not the party manages to defeat him, his boss shows up and utterly destroys the party in a true Hopeless Boss Fight. Naturally, there's no way to save or heal in between any of these encounters.
    • Done properly at the next fake ending with a Dual Boss (Pronyma and the two Idun) followed by a fight with the Big Bad, Yggdrassil, which doesn't actually lead to any closure, as he leaves when you knock off a quarter of his max HP. And again in the real finale, with two forms of Mithos.
    • This trick is also pulled at the Wind Seal where the party must fight a boss in order for Colette to release the seal. This battle, while not very hard, can be draining on your items. As the party is exiting the dungeon, Sheena attacks the party for a second, more difficult fight that is made harder due to the fact that you likely used many healing items earlier. Of course, this sequence would not be mentioned on this page if there was a save point present between the two points, so have fun fighting the first boss again if you lose to Sheena.
• The final boss of any route in Undertale plays with this quite a bit:
  • The neutral route's battle against Photoshop Flowey has the player alternating between trying (and most likely failing) to avoid everything Flowey has at his immediate disposal and reaching out to the six Human SOULs. After the SOULs begin to help you, it's a matter of avoiding Flowey's desperate attempts to kill you while slowly whittling him down.
  • The True Pacifist final boss, the newly-ressurected and newly-superpowered Asriel, starts with avoiding all his newfound capabilities until he reveals the Ultimate God of Hyperdeath form. Interestingly enough, he only uses one attack in this second form, but you'll find it balances out when you have to SAVE your friends from his grasp. And despite all of that, the battle's easier than it sounds since you automatically revive every time you die.
  • The No Mercy final boss, Sans, is one of the greatest challenges in Undertale. His battle is divided into two stages. The first one offers 13 attacks (unless you waste your turns) that are pretty linear but sure to overwhelm unprepared players. After this, Sans offers to Spare you, but this is merely a trick to pull off a one-hit kill. Choose to Fight him some more, and enter a second stage where the attacks become more varied and difficult, and if you die you have to start all over again. The text in the battle menu even says: "The REAL battle finally begins."
• Unlimited Saga: in addition to the antagonist of the Scenario, you also have to fight Chaos immediately afterward (4 forms), though you do recover some HP and LP. This isn't even covering Mythe's Scenario, where you have to fight a Sequential Boss and then another powerful boss before even fighting Chaos.
• The final boss of Wild ARMs 3 takes this Serial Escalation. Its final boss has a whopping eleven forms.
• Xenoblade Chronicles X: The final boss is four different fights in a row. First you fight the Vita, piloted by Luxaar. Then Luxaar transforms the Vita into a more powerful form. Then a lengthy cutscene ensues, after which you fight a swarm of grotesque chimeras. After another cutscene, the chimeras merge with Luxaar and Lao to form the actual final boss.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: The final battle's a doozy at a total of five fights. First, Z is fought in Moebius's Amphitheatre where the party must tackle traumatic memories and Z changing the arena terrain to unlock their Interlink ability. Then, Z reveals his true form as Z-Infinity. After that, Noah/Eunie/Lanz battle Moebius X-Infinity alongside various Keves Heroes recruited throughout the game, while Mio/Taion/Sena have Agnus Heroes join them against Moebius Y-Infinity. Finally, Z-Infinity's fought once more, this time with Nia and Melia teleporting in to help finish Z off. Combined with the many cutscenes peppered throughout the entire affair, the final battle can last over an hour.
• Xenogears has tons of these sequences. By far the worst is the battle with Ramsus and Miang's gears on Disc 2. The first boss has the ability to reduce all your gears to 1 HP instantly, forcing you to waste fuel healing, and is followed by one of the HARDEST bosses in the game, with no chance to recover.

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