That One Attack / Tales Series

• Tales of Phantasia
  • Tetra Spell, courtesy of Dhaos, which is each of the four elemental spells in a row and easily leaves the party in critical HP, if it doesn't kill at least one party member, especially Mint.
  • Undine's wave-slash, as it travels from right to left across the entire field and hits your party, likely interrupting whatever spell your mages were casting at the time.
• Tales of Symphonia
  • Retribution, an attack by the first form of the Final Boss. It gives two random status ailments to each party member and the attack is almost impossible to stop.
  • Abyssion gained every Mystic Arte your party has in the PS2/PS3 version. And if that isn't bad enough, he starts the battle with a Mystic Arte on higher difficulties. Unless one has already learned how to time this and get out of the Mystic Arte's range, it'll be an instant Party Wipe.
• Tales of the Abyss
  • Majority of the Mystice Artes of bosses are avoidable, unless they pull one off out of nowhere. However, Arietta's Big Bang hits the entire field. The only fortunate part is that Big Bang never kills, it only leaves the character a 1 HP, at most.
  • The optional cameo bosses' Mystic Artes, with Philia having Big Bang and Sacred Penance, both being very painful and guaranteed to hit you. There's also Reid's Aurora Wall, which doesn't just cause damage to you, but also revives his fallen allies.
  • Nebilim stole your pary's Mystic Artes, meaning she has access to Mystic Cage, Fortune Arc, Rending Saber, Radian Howl and Big Bang, from Arietta. The only one that is her own is her worst: Fragmented End. It does a good 80.000 damage and the HP cap is at 9.999.
• Tales of Vesperia
  • "Fly, o Holy Sword! Brilliant Cataclysm!" by Big Bad Alexei, which tends to cue a Party Wipe. Its only saving grace is that it actually doesn’t hit the entire field, just a huge area (like the Revitalise spell), so it’s entirely possible to completely avoid it if you aren’t close by and aren’t directly in front of them.
  • Alexei also has Guardian Frost, which heals him for around 5% of his life bar each time (you can slightly reduce that amount by interrupting him, but that's not guaranteed to work (especially if he uses Over Limit, which prevents his attacks from being interrupted). He loves to spam that Arte once his HP drops below half, and a single use restores several comboes' worth of HP, meaning that unless you are extremely aggressive, he's bound to out-heal your damage output, putting you in a long, boring stalemate until you run out of items and TP.
  • There's also Big Bang, which Final Boss uses rarely. But the Superboss? Uses it so frequently, you will get sick of hearing that. And Big Bang is worse than it was in previous games as, on higher difficulties, it will kill you and do about as much damage as Fragmented End.
• Tales of Graces
  • The Mystic Arte of the final boss kills at least two members, unless one is fighting on Easy Mode. Otherwise, it'll obliterate your entire party.
  • There's also Emeraude with her Killing Field that is immediately used after entering Arles Rise, which hits the entire battlefield and is likely to put everyone into critical HP or kill them outright, if the AI is not defending. Which they tend to not do. The trick to winning with ease here is playing as Pascal or Malik and having party members with ranged spells only use their ranged spells and not their regular, close quarters attacks. After all, the field just surrounds Emeraude; it doesn't hurt you if you're shooting her from afar.
  • There's the Fodra Queen, whose ultimate move can do over one hundred thousand points of damage, in a game where the cap is 9,999. The only way to counter it is to push just the right directions and buttons to activate Blue Earth, but the game won't tell you any of that.
• Tales of Xillia
  • Gilland's Beam Spam move is incredibly powerful and difficult to dodge, especially if he goes into a corner first. You may be able to block it and survive no problem, but it is a matter of luck if the AI controlled allies aren't already in the way. By the time the move is over, you may very well be the only one standing. And that's not even considering the link arte version with Celsius.
  • Every single link arte a boss uses against you counts. Most of them are overpowered and way stronger than you, most cause various status debuffs, and many are nearly unavoidable.
• Tales of Xillia 2
  • Chronos' Tetra Spell is a Game-Breaker. Remember Dhaos' Tetra Spell? Imagine that but with lower casting time. Now imagine that it's all at once, not one at a time like Dhaos' was. The water hits from beneath you making it virtually impossible to block, the fireball and rock coming right away after. It's a One-Hit KO during the first fight.
  • Gaius' counter is pretty nasty too. If you accidentally hit him while he's blocking, he can insta kill you before you know what you did wrong.
  • Every single one of Victor's Artes when he's in Chromatus. They hit about as hard as when the player is using them, come out extremely quickly, often have immense range, and can be followed by a Mystic Arte that will likely kill everyone caught in it.
  • Julius' Moonlight Assault attack, which inflicts the confusion status due to being Light elemental. Confusion is essentially a death sentence in a Duel Boss fight, all you can do is watch as Ludger walks up to Julius and lets him tear him apart, and you can't cure it since confused characters can't use items. What really seals it is this attack inflicts Confusion even if you block it.
• Tales of Berseria:
  • Any spell called "[Status Effect] Break", which are common among normal enemies. They hit a very large area around the caster, making it very likely that the entire party will be hit, and, of course, inflict a Status Effect on everyone caught in the wave, which is very bad, since status effects prevent all HP recovery and case afflicted characters to lose one Soul, shortening their combo length and potentially preventing the use of Break Souls.
  • Insubstantiality, the strongest Malak Arte. It deals a very large amount of damage over a very wide radius. On Laphicet's hands, he can wipe put an entire group of enemies. When it is used against you, it can wipe your entire party out faster than Mystic Artes did and bosses casts it faster than Laphicet did.
• Tales of Arise: Ganabelt's Indignation. It deals massive damage to the whole party, likely enough to kill frailer party members even at full health, and is the only undodgeable enemy Mystic Arte in the whole game.^note Unless you count the Sword Art Online collaboration DLC, in which case it shares that classification with only Asuna's Unlimited Terrain Manipulation (but that move only triggers if you bring down Kirito first). The first time he uses it, he also creates an impenetrable barrier, as well as three clones that support it. You technically can kill these clones and stop the attack, but at this point you'll likely be able to kill only one. And then, after the attack goes off, both Ganabelt and surviving clones will try to finish off the weakened party.
• Tales of the World Radiant Mythology:
  • Final Boss Widdershin can use Eternal Finality (Nereid/Shizel's ultimate attack, which required a specific counter to avoid being an instant game over, as it dealt 20.000 damage and healed Nereid completely) when he gets to half health. Upside: it doesn't heal Widdershin and it does a lot less damage than its original incarnation. Downside: it still hits for almost 5.000 damage or more and it has no counter in this game, so it will always hurt.
  • Widdershin also has an attack that is less party-wide deadly, but can still kill a character, where he kicks a character into the air and proceeds to stab them with multiple swords and generally kills the character right away. And he likes doing this just before or after using the above attack.