Wake Up Call Boss / Role-Playing Games

• The early parts of Angry Birds Epic are quite easy; you can beat most pigs just by attacking with Red and the Blues, and occasionally healing. The Howler, summoned by Wizpig as a gatekeeper to the Star Reef, is when the gloves come off. The boss has lots of HP and an attack which inflicts very strong damage over time — forcing you to waste a turn with the Blues to cure it instead of attacking, dragging out the fight. The Howler can also summon ghostly reinforcements, which will overwhelm your birds if they're not defeated promptly, so you'll have to balance between wearing the enemies down and keeping your birds alive. You’ll also need to knock out the boss and all of its minions within 2 turns of each other, or else they’ll revive with full HP. While undead pigs have appeared before, this is the first boss that forces you to pay attention to your enemies' abilities and play around them, and perhaps retry with a different lineup or better equipment.
• After the easy first parts of Another Crusade, Demon General Arc serves as the wake-up call. You get Niro in this fight, making this the first boss fought with two party members... and Arc makes sure you know how to properly use them. His attacks deal high damage to both Rai and Niro unless you've got a good grip of Action Commands, and his HP is high enough that he can survive for quite a while and wear you down in a battle of attrition. Every few turns, he'll put on a layer of Kevlard and become immune to damage, forcing you to have Niro cast Water Bubble to make him vulnerable... but if you use Niro's spells to attack too recklessly, he'll be out of SP by the time Arc becomes invincible again. Even if you know how to block attacks and ration your SP and resources over a long fight, you might need to do some Level Grinding to succeed.
• You can breeze through the first half of Atelier Annie quite easily by buying your raw materials instead of gathering and by ignoring jobs with attribute requirements. But then assignment 5 has you fighting a not-insignificant monster. If you've neglected to raise your exploration level, you're in trouble two ways. First, the monster will clobber you and you'll need either some level grinding or bomb items to win. Second, just beating him isn't enough for the Gold Medal — to get that, you must grind for a certain rare drop, trade it to an NPC for a specific weapon, find an item that makes a particular Supplement (which isn't even available unless your exploration level is at least 20), and then enchant the weapon with the right attribute using the supplement. Not too hard if you know it's coming, but if you don't, kiss the Golden Ending goodbye.
• Amorphes from Avalon Code will force you to see the monster description, or you won't be able to beat him.
• Baldur's Gate featured a tough early boss in Mulahey. Tarnesh — the mage in the Friendly Arm Inn — even more so. Beating him is something like a Luck-Based Mission: If you can successfully interrupt his initial protection spell, he is dead in seconds. If you can't, he's untouchable until he had the chance to decimate your party. His second spell makes its victims unable to fight back at all and sometimes it affects your entire party. There are several ways to deal with him (draw the much more powerful town guards into the fight so they can take care of him, just run into a building whenever he starts casting a spell to cause him to waste all his magic, etc.), but there's virtually no way a first-time player would ever think of any of them.
  • The next chapter features the Wolfpack Boss battle inside Tazok's tent. Before, most bosses could be quickly dispatched by throwing everything you have against the boss and shutting him down. Not here. Instead of one guy and, in Mulahey's case, a few weak skeletons, the tent contains a full-on party with a mage and three fighters. The mage is positioned well behind the tanks, out of reach of your melee fighters, who will be completely unable to get past the fighters without killing them. The mage will then immediately cast party-disabling AoE spells, starting with Horror, which almost always hits at this early stage, and will render your party helpless, running around in terror for up to a full minute while the fighters beat on them, with gruesome results. You're going to have to outlast the initial wave of spells, and pre-buff with spells or potions to improve your saving throws and ward against Status Effects to survive this fight. Hope you brought a cleric or druid.
• Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden has the Ghost Dad. The first few bosses in the game were relatively easy to dispatch, and this boss, being a spectral Bill Cosby, doesn't seem like it would be any different until you actually fight it. Among his tricks are lowering your speed (giving him more turns), increasing his own power (which is already fairly high to begin with), and worst of all, inflicting the whole party with multiple random status ailments all at once. And he uses that last attack quite liberally, and it's even worse considering that there isn't a whole lot you can do about status ailments this early in the game. If you don't come into the fight prepared, he will wipe the floor with you.
• In Baten Kaitos you have the Nunkirantula and Giacomo as wake up calls. The Nunkirantula will constantly buff its defense, and if you don't know basic elemental alignments, you'll be dealing out Scratch Damage very quickly. Giacomo, meanwhile, is almost impossible to beat if you're lazy with leveling and deck construction.
• Baten Kaitos Origins:
  • The afterling in Olgan's mansion is the very first boss of the game, and is here to tell you just how brutal Origins' difficulty level is.
  • Like the first game, Giacomo rolls up to the party early on swinging his scythe and hitting like a runaway dump truck to teach you the importance of leveling up your party and properly constructing a deck. If you haven't taken the time to raise your level his Thrashingale can easily deliver a One-Hit KO even without being chained to a few regular attacks (it usually is), and his habit of knocking down individual party members and interrupting attacks means you'd better have thought to put enough healing and revival items in your deck for everyone to use.
  • The afterling at Botean Lake is the first boss fought with control over a full party. As in the previous example, he teaches players that it's vital to keep your health up as much as possible and that you must revive fallen party members immediately.
  • The Holoholobird is a mid-game example. If you just smashed your way through the first disc, going with whatever you drew, the Holoholobird will stomp you into the dirt. If you don't know about EX Combos, you'd better learn, because this is where the game stops messing around.
• Mistwalker seems to love this trope, as the same thing is true of their other game, Blue Dragon. The first real boss is a dinosaur/dragon thing. If you've gotten the hang of combat and are sufficiently leveled, it's not too hard, but if you're not ready for it, it will absolutely slaughter you without compunction or remorse.
• Bloodborne: Father Gascoigne is the first required boss, the first to use your own tricks against you, first to have multiple phases, and is there to teach you that if you can't reliably dodge attacks or keep up with the fast-paced combat, you aren't ready for the rest of the game.
• Breath of Fire II:
  • Augus. He gets two turns every round, and one of his actions is to charge up his next attack to do extra damage. Charging up then attacking in the same round will one-shot Katt even at full health (and Ryu and Rand if they're not pretty close to full health). Not only can he also heal himself, but it's also possible to face him with only Ryu and Rand if you messed up the coliseum event; God help you if you didn't push Katt out of the way of those darts.
  • Terapin, a giant turtle-like boss with a mind-control attack which forces you to attack your own party members. Both his fire breath and earthquake attacks do a ton of damage and affect the entire party.
• Breath of Fire III:
  • Gisshan, Scylla and Charyb are not especially difficult if you're prepared, but they are a fancy way of telling you to prepare fire defenses before going into a fire dungeon, in case you hadn't gotten the memo.
  • Mikba is the second boss of the adult era. His battle is the point where the brakes come off, and just transforming into the nastiest dragon you can make won't be enough to win anymore. He specializes in Reprisals, deals nearly-fatal damage with each shot, you start the fight with one party member knocked out, and waking Rei up has its own dangers. Keeping your team healed and shielded, and not unleashing Rei's Weretiger power blindly, is necessary for success.
• Breath of Fire IV has Ymechaf, which is encountered roughly a quarter through the game. His attacks are fairly powerful, but his defense is sky high. In short, the boss is the game's way of telling you "You're gonna wanna learn some of that combo magic."
• The serpent Trio from Child of Light. It's a Wolfpack Boss with different elemental weaknesses for each head. The orange head deals moderate fire-elemental damage to both characters. The blue head does high water-elemental damage to one character. But the nastiest is the green head — it is incredibly fast, allowing it to interrupt Finn (the Squishy Wizard who uses elements effective against the heads) with ease, and also has a move that temporarily paralyzes a character. You'll be needing much healing in this fight.
• In Chrono Trigger, the first boss, Yakra, can quite easily be brute-forced even if you don't understand the complexities of the combat system. The Dragon Tank that comes about an hour later, however, is a Wake Up Call Boss. Its parts must be attacked in a specific order (head, wheel, body), and as it can heal itself, you have to proceed intelligently rather than keep attacking until it dies. And then there's 2300 A.D. which is a whole Wake Up Call Area telling you "No, you can't just bash A to win".
• In City of Heroes, Frostfire, the first elite boss players have the opportunity to face, fits this trope perfectly. He's fairly trivial compared to most later elite bosses, let alone archvillains, but he's much harder than anything new players have seen before him. On top of that, many veteran players avoid the Hollows, denying new players a source of advice. Part of what gives Frostfire his infamy is that most players (particularly new players) go about the fight all wrong. Generally, players running through the Hollows content try to put together a full team of 8 to take him down. This means that the final room containing the man himself also contains 20-30 mooks, and the icy terrain makes pulling them away nearly impossible. With a team of two or three, however, the final room is much emptier, and it's far easier to grab him alone.
• ClaDun: This is an RPG! doesn't have very many boss encounters, and most enemies can be dealt with through basic attacks. However, when you reach the last floor of the Monster House, you'll have to deal with a fire knight, who has an incredibly powerful Flaming Sword attack and has a shield that greatly reduces damage from frontal attacks. If you haven't been making good use of your Magic Circles and Upgrade Artifacts, you're going to get beaten down repeatedly, even with high-leveled characters serving as your support/shields.
• Dark Cloud: Chances are you've probably been brute-forcing your way through the first dungeon with Toan and only been using Xiao when the game forces you to. Dran will very quickly beat it into your head that this approach won't work with bosses, since he spends nearly the entire fight in the air, meaning you have to use Xiao to shoot him down so Toan can wail on him. And if you take too long to do it, Dran will start blasting holes in the floor.
• Darkest Dungeon gives you an idea of the difficulty ahead with the Necromancer, who can be encountered by the fourth week of the game in the Ruins and who is more than capable of killing your starting heroes if they go in under-equipped. There is also the Collector, a dangerous miniboss who can show up randomly in any dungeon without warning once you have enough loot collected, and can absolutely destroy an underprepared party. Similarly, the Crimson Court DLC has a miniboss hidden as early as your first expedition there and is rather unforgiving.
• In The Dark Spire, most of the early bosses range from only a bit harder than normal fights to actually easier than normal fights. Then you hit the first boss with a breath weapon. It can nearly One-Hit KO your party. Then the second one can One-Hit KO most of your party, and the third can One-Hit KO all of it. All of these are designed to teach you the importance of the Cast Quickly command. If you don't use it, you will die.
• Diablo features The Butcher, who is an extremely tough opponent for the part of the game he appears in, being very fast and capable of dealing huge amounts of damage in close combat. He quickly becomes That One Boss to lower level characters because the only way to beat him safely depends on the randomly-generated terrain spawning in such a fashion to let you plink him to death at range, or to level up your Dexterity to at least 55 so that you can trade blows with him in melee while taking fewer hits. Thankfully, he only has a 50% chance of appearing, and drops a nifty unique axe when he finally goes down.
• Diablo II, had this at several points in the game, many of which were lethal on the Hardcore difficulty, and were designed to screw over those with poor gear or bad skill distribution.
  • Good luck taking down Blood Raven if you're a melee fighter. In fact, given her speed, powerful ranged attacks, and the minions she calls up periodically to harass you, good luck period.
  • Duriel, the Lord of Pain, is definitely worthy of his title. So you're a ranged class and you've been running away shooting over your shoulder all the time, eh? You think you can kite or outrange every single monster in the game, eh? You think that hit points are useless because nothing comes close to you, eh? You think if you ever come close to dying, you can always run away, eh? And the game would never put you in an inescapable sardine can with a boss that will charge you for an instant kill if you get too far away and has an unresistable slow aura? Ha!
  • As of v1.13 at least, Duriel no longer uses the charge, but his (un)Holy Freeze aura makes you hardly able to retaliate effectively as he dices up your character in short order.
• Diablo III, meanwhile, has two of these:
  • The Skeleton King is the very first boss you meet that uses teleport and hard-hitting attacks, in addition to summoning minions. You will need to use dodging, defense, and mitigation in order to take him down.
  • If you came into the Belial battle thinking you can just roll over him with your offensive abilities, you're going to die. The very nature of his attacks means you will have to use damage mitigation and movement to avoid being melted.
• Digimon World 3 has the Byakko Leader, which marks the point where you can just brute-force your way through boss battles. His final Digimon, Mamemon, can randomly inflict the "Frozen" status (with a rather high chance rate) and once frozen, your Digimon will waste turn after turn doing nothing as Mamemon deals a Death of a Thousand Cuts. This marks the point where paying attention to status effects becomes important, as does customizing accessories for certain battles and having a decent stock of items in general. Datamon, fought not long afterwards, has a four-hit combo as his standard attack, which can quickly rack up damage, but since he's by himself it's not hard to Zerg Rush him. Multi-hit moves quickly become the norm for bosses soon after his introduction.
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins's first "Red" (Boss) enemy is the Ogre. Up until this point, you've had some tough, but winnable battles, mostly against mooks, where some relatively simple tactics will generally win the fight. The Ogre, though... hooh boy... The entrance to the tower is a Wake Up Call Level, too. You're running headlong into a trap fanged by a fireball-using Emissary and several archers. That teaches you to get in smart, fast, and take down the enemy before you get taken down.
  • The first boss in Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, The Withered, gives you a taste of being on the receiving end of the new high end talents available in the expansion. The moment you see all the damage dealt to him being reduced to zero thanks to "Carapace" is the moment you realize that the new abilities are not to be taken lightly.
• Dragon Quest games can be hard, and often pack a Wake-Up-Call Boss to let you know that.
  • Dragon Quest II doesn't have many boss fights but they're usually this trope. The Gremlins will really test your strategic ability before you can get the ship. Think you're ready for Hargon's Castle? Say hello to three mini-bosses in a row; the first one (Atlas) deserves particular mention as one that WILL kick your ass if you're not up to speed.
  • Dragon Quest III: The first fight against Robbin' 'Ood is a huge lesson in why party buffs are essential to survive.
  • Dragon Quest VII has the hackrobat. He has tons of HP, gets two turns per round, can blind you, has a powered-up attack, and none of your magic works!!
  • Dragon Quest VIII has Geyzer, who is pretty tough for a first boss, but Don Mole has tons of HP, can call for backup, has an area-of-effect attack, and can confuse the entire party.
  • Dragon Quest IX has the Wight Knight. Did you recruit any allies at Patty's Place beforehand and level them up?
    • There's also the Ragin' Contagion later in the game, which teaches you why it's a good idea to have 1) an ally who can heal your party and 2) items that can cure status effects like Poison and Paralyze.
  • In Dragon Quest Heroes II: Twin Kings and the Prophecy's End, the fight against Maya in Ingenia's throne room will prove to be a pain in the neck. She retains all of the skills she had from her playable appearance in the prequel, dancing all over the battlefield while tossing her fans and high-level Sizzle spells at your party. Every so often, she'll use her Puff spell to bathe the area in flames, so if you don't heed your party's warning to block the incoming attack, you'll probably have to burn a Yggdrasil Leaf to pick one of your allies up from the ground.
• In Dungeon Fighter Online, the lightning Knoll is the first boss that legitimately can give you trouble. It's the first boss that possesses powerful ranged attacks, and its moves can hit for a ton of damage. They also usually multihit, resulting in you failing a quest. Of course, he's easy relative to the later bosses.
• EarthBound (1994):
  • Frank Fly might not seem so harsh to a beginning player... until they have to fight his "Frankystein Mark II" immediately afterward. This fight mostly serves to teach you about the rolling HP meter; without exploiting that, you're in for a world of pain. Then, get past him and the Giant Step, you have to deal with the Onett Police Force, a massive Sequential Boss fight against five foes: four Cops, which immediately become Degraded Bosses after the fight, showing up in the area you gain access to after the fight, and then Captain Strong, who can guard and change his own stats. Strong isn't so bad; it's the fact you're dealing with five boss fights in a row with no healing in between, and each enemy has one attack that can deal around 30 damage to you, which, at this point in the game, is a lot.
  • The Titanic Ant is also a wake-up call in its own way. It's a Flunky Boss at a time when you only have Ness, and uses PSI moves against you.
• Elden Ring: Margit, the Fell Omen. He guards the easiest way to Stormveil and is basically there as a way to tell the player that the game wants them to explore; if you just rush in a straight line through Limgrave and don't bother to upgrade anything, you will run smack into Margit, and he will curbstomp you. His moveset is also designed to punish players who thought they could coast through the game with knowledge of previous Souls combat.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind: Snowy Granius is a battlemage who hangs out on the bridge to Arkngthand. He's wearing a heavy armor cuirass, wielding an axe, will likely summon a skeleton when he sees you, and knows several other damaging spells as well. For a player who has stuck to the main quest, this will likely be his or her first real challenge, and may even be the first non-critter the player has fought.
  • Skyrim offers several:
    • Salhoknir. Put off "A Blade In the Dark" long enough, and when he crawls out of that burial mound, you're going to have an Ancient Dragon when you may be only high enough of a level to be fighting Blood or Frost Dragons.
    • The Draugr Boss at the end of Bleak Falls Barrow. This is probably the first boss monster the player will encounter in the game, as well as the first opponent who will provide a challenge, unless you are unlucky enough to encounter a bear or a sabre cat on the way to Whiterun. The Wounded Frostbite Spider fought before you receive the Golden Claw is surprisingly tough as well.
    • Some dungeons, including a notable few on Solstheim, have particularly high level enemies that will spawn there. For example, upon running across Saering's Watch, where you obtain the first part of the Bend Will shout, you can be only level 30 and find yourself surrounded by Draugr Deathlords and Draugr Death Overlords, when you're used to fighting Restless and Scourge Draugr. Even on the lowest difficulty setting, be prepared to start chugging potions.
    • Hamelyn, the guy squatting in caves underneath the Honningbrew Meadery. Up to this point in the Thieves' Guild questline, your jobs have been burglarizing, extortion, pickpocketing, and arson - usually with specific instructions not to kill anyone or cause more harm than is necessary. Then WHAM!, they hit you with this guy. Surrounded by an army of skeevers and spiders, Hamelyn boasts impressive fireball spells and is nigh impossible to sneak to or past at lower levels (if you alert his "pets", you alert him as well). There is absolutely no warning that this guy is part of the mission, making it highly possible you didn't bring the right gear with you. Good luck with that. It's even lampshaded. The guy who hired you for the job KNEW about him, he just didn't want to scare potential recruits away. Would YOU have taken the job, if you knew what you were in for?
    • Going to High Hrothgar at too low of a level may result in the frost troll near the monastery serving as one of these.
    • Mirmulnir, first dragon soon after you Bring News Back from Helgen's destruction-by-dragon. True, you have the Whiterun Guard as backup, but seriously, you just left the First Town, Riverwood, not twenty minutes ago. (By the way, the dragon you fight isn't the same dragon that attacked Helgen.)
• Due to it being a MMOG, chances are you will eventually stumble into one of these in Elsword. Those bosses will teach you that bumrushing isn't going to work. You'll have to be aware of automatic "super armor" which puts them into temporary no-flinch status once they've taken enough hits. Some of them also have super armor while executing certain attacks (usually the most powerful ones) and will be able to interrupt you mid-combo if you so much as hesitate.
  • Bereauk and Kayak are two bosses that will teach you how to pay attention to dodging. While the former is fairly forgiving as he does not do as much damage(but can drain you off mana easily with status effects), the latter has a homing magical projectile, devastating fire-based attacks and summons a previous boss once his health gets low enough.
  • Then there's Wally No.9, who, unlike other bosses faced so far, moves almost as swiftly as you, super armors at will and can take a potshot at you with no warning from across the map if you refuse to approach him. And you had to fight another boss just a minute earlier with no chance of recovery in-between.
  • And if any of those were not enough for you, Raven most definitely will be enough. Being one of the selectable characters, he follows the exact same movement rules as your player character and can combo you with impunity if you so much as let him hit you with his Nasod Arm.
• The Epic Battle Fantasy series makes a point of having these in each installment beyond the first one:
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 2 has the Guardian, whose Cognizant Limbs will regrow if you don't use the proper status effects, but will pummel you into the ground and bury you if you ignore them. This is where you learn there's no such thing as a Useless Useful Spell in this game.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 3 has the Wooly Mammoth, who does much of the same, except with a gigantic HP pool and some crazy hard strikes, with the summons acting as its medics.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 4 has the Praetorian, who also teaches you the exact same thing, except he uses an insane buff on itself that can get your party killed in one sweeping strike if you don't know what a dispel is.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 5 bumps its difficulty with the Neon Valkyrie, the second boss. Jotun was a straightforward fight, but the Neon Valkyrie has much higher stats, more devastating skills, and can summon various turrets with their own gimmicks that need to be managed. Lance fights alongside it as powerful backup.
• The Etrian Odyssey series contains many good examples of this, such as a F.O.E. on the very first floor of the game that will utterly destroy most mid-leveled parties and demonstrate to the player that you should not actually try to kill everything the very first time you encounter it. Then you have the first boss, for which you'll learn the hard way how to prepare for a real fight for survival or else your adventure will be halted (Chimaera in Heroes of Lagaard and Amalgolem in Beyond the Myth are especially cruel at this).
• Eye of the Beholder: The giant spiders and the whole fourth level of the first game can be considered this trope. Prior to this, the first three levels are set in the sewers beneath the city of Waterdeep and involve weaker enemies such as kobolds and undead. The fourth levels and beyond contrast by resembling ancient labyrinths but the enemies get much harder. Specifically, you immediately encounter giant spiders upon landing in the fourth level. The spiders can poison you and you probably only have limited means of curing the poison status at this stage in the form of a "slow poison" spell. It's not unusual to have characters die from poison damage before you can find antidotes.
• The first (and only mandatory) Super Mutant Behemoth encounter in Fallout 3 can get many a low level character pulverized by its fire hydrant hammer, and inexperienced players can easily blow themselves up with the Fat Man that is provided. Worse, if Broken Steel is installed, you may have to fight a Super Mutant Overlord or two beforehand who start spawning at level 15 (out of 30 and prove a hard fight at max level!).
• The Macomb mission of Fallout Tactics — or more specifically, the barricade just before the library. The first three missions of the game you can just Rambo through, due to having better skills and weapons than your enemies. Then you start Macomb and the enemies now have better armor, aiming, and a knack for sniping you from the rooftops. It's still not too hard, but then halfway through, you open a gate and a random mook on the other side fires on you with a rocket launcher, while his pal crouching behind some sandbags tosses grenades at you. If you survive, you quickly get the message that it's time to put those stealth and ambush tactics they taught you in the tutorial to good use.
• The Final Fantasy Legend games feature several of these.
  • Gen-Bu from The Final Fantasy Legend was likewise a sudden jump in difficulty. And it was possible to save to the game's single save slot after triggering him, and just before fighting him, rendering your game borderline Unwinnable.
  • Final Fantasy Legend II: It's possible to get pretty far with a weak party by relying on NPC guest characters, running away from battles, saving a lot, and sheer luck. Then the player runs into Venus, who will wipe the floor with any player that's been neglecting to upgrade the party's equipment and its stats. Much later, near the end of the game, the fight with Apollo presents another brick wall.
  • Chaos from Final Fantasy Legend III is none too easy either, he uses Quake which hits all allies for heavy damage.
• Fleuret Blanc:
  • The very first trophy bout, against Roland, tends to give people a lot of trouble. Though he averts being an Early-Bird Boss, he can still be confusing and unpredictable, making him into a Luck-Based Mission. He's supposed to teach players about the style point system, as the best strategy for beating him is to salute Grams and rack up enough style points that you'll win even if you run out of Hit Points. Unfortunately, as this is the player's first real foray into the combat system, this isn't readily apparent to most players.
  • Le Neuvieme, the next trophy bout, is an even more extreme version. He is an Early-Bird Boss, and his dodging strategy is even more unpredictable than Roland's. He's also even more focused on style points, necessitating that players really know what they're doing. Even the developer says this fight is "the bane of [his] existence"!
  • Inverted by Masque, the next boss. You may have thought Le Neuvieme was preparing you for a difficult style-off, but Masque is actually not a style fighter, making him refreshingly straightforward and predictable.
• The first real War Sequence from Freelancer, when you end up in Bretonia, tells how the next storyline missions are gonna be.
• In Gaia Online, the first few zones (Barton Sewers, Village Greens, and Bill's Ranch) are fairly easy, as long as you've been collecting and leveling up your rings properly. The only time you'll really need to crew up is for the Gnome General boss. Where the Wake Up Call comes in is dependent on what the player chooses to do after they finish the "Ranch Hand" quest line. If players elect to help Ian with the "Denial of Service" quest line, they explore the rest of Dead Mans Pass, and fight the OMGWTF, who can decimate an unprepared crew. Players can instead elect to travel to Zen Gardens, in which Qixter and the dev crew remind you that just because this is a "casual mmo" doesn't mean it's an easy one. Zen Gardens stresses safety in numbers. Enemies in the southern area can either kill you in one hit, or Swarm you to death, while enemies in the northern half enjoy playing ping pong with you. But the real wake up call has to be Kat's Kokeshi Doll, the final boss of the zone. It's That One Boss for many players. Prior to the zone's revamp, defeating it was actually the first quest of the zone. And it wasn't instanced.
  • In a bit of irony, visiting the gardens is actually much more difficult if you fail to visit Dead Mans Pass, as you miss out on valuable Ring and Orb Drops. It's recommended that you take on OMGWTF before you head to the gardens. Your avatar will thank you.
  • Before the game's difficulty was lowered, She Wolf was this.
• In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Badass Normal pirate Briggs is definitely this. He comes after you with two buddies for support, hits like a truck, uses both damage and recovery items, and will call more buddies if you take down the ones he starts with. Worst of all? It's way too easy to accidentally reach him far earlier in the game than you're supposed to, underleveled and underequipped.
  • Dark Dawn drops the Stealth Scouts on you in the Konpa Caverns, who also like damage/recovery items, team tactics, and add Status Effects (Stun Shuriken) and Mana Burn (Psy Grenades) to the menu. The last of these is a real terror unless you know how to exploit Djinn (and have collected them all!) or spam recovery items of your own, since it ruins the possibility of healing Psynergy.
  • The original Golden Sun was possibly the worst offender of this in the series. The player had likely fought a few bosses by the time they reach the Mercury Lighthouse. The bosses before it being a trio of bandits and (possibly) a possessed tree. Neither were exceptionally difficult. And then they must fight one of the game's main antagonists, who has a brutal physical attack, and plenty of hit-all Psynergy while you have no group heal spells or items. Oh yeah, and your recently acquired healer can die in one bad hit from him thanks to her elemental attribute. Have fun!
• Granblue Fantasy:
  • Unlike the earlier bosses who can be easily defeated by raw damage output, Yggdrasil Malice is the first real challenge of the Story Mode. Players are likely expected to have developed their grids, worked on weapon skill levels, or levelled-up their characters to have a chance of beating her.
  • The inclusion of the high Elemental Resistance mechanic for some bosses like the Xeno, Primarchs, and Arcarum bosses encouraged players to develop grids for all elements and not just focus on a single one.
• Guild Wars features Wake Up Call Missions.
  • Zen Daijun from Factions. Minister Cho's estate was virtually a tutorial. When you get to Zen Daijun and face a whole HORDE of the Afflicted AND that horrible Miasma which spreads degenerations around your entire party (particularly bad if you're using henchmen, who don't know well enough to not stand in close formation and keep reinfecting each other) AND you have to bodyguard 2 (admittedly very high level) NPCs... prepare to die. And right after Zen Daijun was a brief time on Kaineng City, before Vizunah Square. While it was nerfed eventually, if you weren't at level 20 by that point then you would have a very hard time with it. Tahnhakai Temple similarly taught the player how to carefully pull and how to combat certain skills that enemies from then on would throw out with ease — if you can't pull, focus fire, or counter certain skills via enchantment removal then you will fall behind.
  • Nightfall also had these, however, one thing that was notable compared to Factions and Prophecies was the fact that the "Wake-up call" mission came much later in the game. (Zen Daijun, Vizunah Square, and Tahnhakai Temple are all early missions.) This mission was the Grand Court of Sebelkeh - By that point, the mission assumes that you know how to focus fire, crowd control, keep mobs in area of effect attacks (and have powerful AoE builds like Searing Flames.), to be able to keep your mobility up. and to watch the map. Even though the game does allow you to practice such skills in previous missions and on trash mobs, it's still likely to catch players off guard at the sudden combination of needing to do those skills, especially with how fast the mission can be failed. (It wasn't uncommon for people who didn't know what they were doing to fail within less than a few minutes.)
• Guild Wars 2 has a few:
  • Mai Trin, the first real boss faced in Fractals of the Mists, requires actual coordination and strategy to beat. If you try to just stack and whack, you will die. A lot.
  • Vale Guardian, the first raid boss introduced, is a nasty shock for inexperienced groups. He has several mechanics that need to be coordinated while moving, while healing through constant pressure damage, and failing any of them can make the fight rapidly go off the rails. Also, there's enough randomness to the battle that he's been known to give experienced groups the howling fantods - while he's not the hardest raid boss (that award probably going to either Matthias Gabrel or Soulless Horror), even experienced raiders regard him as moderately difficult.
• Illusion of Gaia — Castoth, the first boss, is frequently cited as one of the game's most difficult. This is mostly because the player may still be learning how to play the game tactically, and because the player character is still weak. In the final Boss Rush, Castoth goes down against a flurry of about half a dozen hits.
• Inazuma Eleven: Things will go very smoothly up until you meet Mikage Sennō Junior High (Brain Washing Junior High in the English anime dub). Unlike your previous opponents, MSJH have much better defensive and ball-keeping stats than your vanilla footballers, and their Killer Techniques, especially those used to steal and keep the ball, are much stronger than most of your team's. It doesn't help that they won't lose any TP during the first half, which basically guarantees that they'll have drained poor Raimon Eleven's energies, unless the player brings enough items to sustain the characters. Worst of all, MSJH have the tendency to play very defensively after scoring a goal (something that is reflected in an episode of the anime).
• Kinder: Princess Hanauta Mitsugi. Prior to her, Mami was a Hopeless Boss Fight and Nightingale was a traditional, easy Warmup Boss. But Hanauta has a powerful, Total Party Kill attack she will unleash at a regular interval (two turns after her heart beats) that can only be survived by blocking. She basically serves to show that the bosses will require more puzzle-based thinking than most RPGs. If you simply try wailing on her, you will die.
• The Marid King in Last Scenario is something of a rude awakening if you thought the game had been tricky up to that point. He serves to teach you that a) status effects in this game are pure evil and b) stealing from random encounters is not a waste of time. If you didn't grab an Alarm Bell or three from the kelpies, your entire party is going to wind up asleep. And, irritatingly, you can't backtrack from that dungeon to pick up more supplies. (You did keep a save file from before you left, right?)
• The Last Story:
  • The white tiger from chapter 2, which is partly a tutorial about using your Gathering and Guard abilities to keep its attention off your comrades, can and will kick your ass if you're not guarding/dodging properly.
  • At the end of the battle on the ship (Chapter 12), you run into a giant terrapin-thing summoned by the ship's captain. While the earlier bosses are either Events or a Bullfight Boss, this one really forces you to think on your feet and learn its tells, because of a spinning-shell attack that will easily wipe out your part all at once, quickly depleting your supply of lives. There's also the Mystic Spider in Chapter 15: Its web attack can make it swallow party members, and if that happens to Zael as well, it's Game Over.
• Legend of Legaia
  • Even Caruban, the first boss, is a decent challenge, as it has more than enough attack power to bring either of your first two characters to their knees in a single combo attack, and has a fire breath attack that can halve your party members' HP.
  • In Duel Saga, Elfin serves as a combination of this and Beef Gate. She is designed to be easy enough if you are at least level 9 and have four art blocks, but difficult to impossible otherwise.
• Lost Odyssey: The first real "boss" is just a kind of gryphon-thing named Grilgan, which really isn't very impressive — but considering your very limited selection of skills, weapons, characters, and spells at the time, he ends up wiping out most players the first time they meet him. And probably the second too. The main difficulty with this boss is that it requires you to make use of the Guard Condition mechanic, which is easily ignorable up until then. Going on the offensive is suicidal — the trick is to focus on defense and keep the Squishy Wizard alive long enough to do the real damage. The official strategy guide for the game even calls Grilgan "the hardest first boss you may ever face in a video game." It doesn't help that even if the player keeps his Guard Condition up, a bout of bad luck (such as Grilgan using its powerful "Downburst" attack twice in a row before you can heal up) can still wipe you out.
• The first boss in Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is a simple affair of Attack! Attack! Attack! while healing whenever your HP gets low. The Big Catfish is a lot tougher and its Earthquake and Flash spells do a considerable amount of damage, capable of easily wiping you out if you don't keep Maxim's HP high. Tarantula comes later in and will painfully teach you to keep you ready for status ailments like Poison. And the boss summons minions that are not only quite strong but can easily turn the tide of the battle in the boss' favor.
• The Garland Boss in Lufia: The Legend Returns is your first clue that boss fights aren't going to be a simple matter in this game. He's accompanied by two flunkies whom he can respawn as long as he's alive, and the three of them can dish out the hurt quite quickly.
• The fight against Gades in Parcelyte in Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals. The only non-Degrading Boss you've fought to this point was Idura, who was a Flunky Boss with a simple gimmick to his fight. Gades attacks more aggressively than any other enemy, has much narrower openings for attack, and past the first phase will take any opportunity he gets to carve off half your HP meter after knocking you down. Spamming Potions is only going to get you so far here.
• Mabinogi uses this. Being an MMORPG, which boss it is depends on how you play:
  • If you try to take Alby Dungeon Normal, you'll face the Giant Spider. While the enemies before this generally do single-digit damage even to raw newbies, the Giant Spider can kill you in two or three hits if you're not familiar with defensive tatics- an attribute which will be shared by both bosses and mooks going forward. It's also a Flunky Boss, meaning you have to have at least a basic understanding of how to manage aggro.
  • If you go to Ciar Dungeon Beginner instead, you'll fight the Small Golem. While less difficult on the whole, it has at least one move that can break through your defensive stance, requiring you to learn how to read and respond to enemy attacks.
  • Finally, if you forgo the dungeons entirely and just do hunting quests, you'll soon find yourself hunting wolves and learning that yes, random wild animals can kill you in this game.
• Magical Starsign:
  • The first encounter with Master Chard. It's a long fight, so you'll have to get used to party members gaining and losing advantage based on the planet orbits and day/night cycle. Next, he has a devastating all-party hit which is telegraphed several turns in advance, teaching you how to prepare for and recover from battle-defining boss abilities. His HP pool is also so massive that you are almost guaranteed to run out of MP, forcing the player to appreciate strategic item use, which is a must when it comes to surviving difficult encounters in this game.
  • A bit later on, there's Lt. Mugwort — more so if you went to Puffoon first instead of Gren. He's a mixture of this trope and Early-Bird Boss, as he'll start the fight by using Celestial Swap — a common spell among bosses later in the game, but one which the player won't have access to yet — to move planet Gren into position and power himself up. Aside from that, Mugwort is just generally a tough boss for this early in the game, with lots of HP and powerful attacks that can hit both single targets and the entire party, especially Lassi. Like Chard, beating him requires the player to use items strategically and get used to the system of planet orbits and the day/night cycle.
• Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis has a rather mean one of these late in the game. If there are more than 3 timecards out on the field at any time, yours or your opponents, doesn't matter, the enemy will transform all of them into devastating attacks that drain at least half of your SP each time the card activates, and at least a third of your HP, making healing yourself or even getting any skills in next to impossible, unless you have Roxis use a skill that removes some of the timecards.
• Silver Horn, third boss of Mega Man X: Command Mission. He has absurdly high defense, the ability to freeze one of your party members on the first turn, an attack that (while not very accurate) can hit all three party members, and once you deplete enough of his health, he boosts his defense and attack power and starts using another powerful attack. This is only made worse by the fact that the new party member starts at level 1 and is weak to all elements. Fighting Wild Jango, the second boss, was more of just "heal and hope for the best" along with learning to use Spider. Silver Horn forces you to take element weaknesses into account to do anything.
• Air Man in Mega Man Battle Network 2 is pretty easy, and leaves you feeling pretty confident in your abilities. Then Quickman spends the whole fight jumping around so you can barely hit him, hits quite hard for that point in the game, and catches your bullets unless you nail him right before he throws a boomerang. It's your first real signal that BN2 is a bit of a Difficulty Spike from 1.
  • Flashman in Battle Network 3 serves to illustrate the fact that yes, enemies can use chips too, and quite effectively; one of his attacks brings up a pair of FlashLights in your area. In your first encounter, they have five Hit Points apiece, but failing to move quickly and destroy them both will result in an (at this point) unblockable stun (there's only one chip you can get at that point in the game that can block it, and the odds of getting it are slim). While you're stunned, he'll steal your front row and, in a move inspired by the AreaGrab+ Sword combo you used in the tutorial level, uses an attack that is guaranteed to hit at least once (since you're stunned) and leave your dodging room for subsequent attacks significantly reduced. As if that wasn't enough, his other attack is a fast attack that can move in either a homing pattern or a zigzag, and it's hard to tell which unless you have very good reflexes. The worst part is when the only other way to counter the attack is used (e.g. use an AreaGrab yourself); then the FlashLights become more spread out, and if you end up on any row but the back row and the lights go off, you still get hit. It completely fails if you just let them stun you on the back row, though.
  • Rogue in the 2nd Mega Man Star Force title. Unlike the previous bosses, he does not blatantly show off where he plans to attack with flashing panels, he moves quickly around the field, making slow attacks hard to connect, the window between planning for an attack and actually performing it is small (where the previous bosses could just be knocked out of an attack by all but a handful of attacks if the player was quick, or at least, they could get out of the way) AND he has an attack (that he spams) that requires dodging mid attack (as the delay after shielding leaves you open to the 2nd hit). This is one of the few times in games where you really will win by a thread like the plot suggests.
  • Unlike the preceding Bonne machines, The Marlwolf from Mega Man Legends will utterly Curb Stomp you if you're not ready. It's the first boss in the game that can use a shield-breaking move which not only homes in but has a huge hitbox, and you can only damage it by jumping on its back and shooting through the door when it's open. It also comes early enough in the game that the only possible sub-weapons you can have are the useless grenade and mine arms, and the machine arm which only becomes useful after a lot of costly upgrades. He basically exists to teach you that if you aren't spending time exploring ruins, buying armor and energy tanks, and purchasing upgrades, this game will hand your shiny blue ass to you.
  • In Legends 2, the Giant Mammoth you fight on Forbidden Island more than qualifies. You have no offensive weapons at the time (except the fire extinguisher), and depending on what difficulty you're playing on, his health bar can get rather large. Add some hard to dodge ice shots, and you have one tough cookie to take down!
• Fairly early in the SNES game Metal Max Returns, you face a pair of bosses called Big Cannons. Between them opening fire on you as you approach them on the world map, having very high HP and armor when you do reach them, and dealing a good bit of damage to your tanks, it's very hard to win simply by using your main cannons. The battles thus teach the player to use part-breaking attacks, making the bosses miss their turns and allowing you to survive long enough to bring them down.
• In Might and Magic X: Legacy, Mamushi the Boss of the Lighthouse (either the second or third Boss you fight, depending on whether you choose to go there or the Den of Thieves first) is a nightmare. First of all, he has an ability that a lot of tough Bosses have called Retaliate, which lets him strike back hard if you hit him. That's the good news. The fight itself takes place on the top of a Lighthouse, and he has another ability that lets him push you backwards, potentially killing the entire party if your back is to the edge. Even worse, he moves very fast, switching to another place in the arena about every other combat turn, making it hard to avoid being in a dangerous spot and make a successful counterattack. Even worse, Bosses in this game share a common ability that makes them immune to most status causing effects that don't directly damage them, so a lot of strategies you've used up to now won't work.
• In Miitopia, if you haven't been utilizing the Safe Spot, you're going to have a hard time against the Pharaoh. During the battle, Miis may become inflicted with a status effect that causes them to offer up healing items to the Pharaoh. Putting the affected Mii in the Safe Spot prevents them from doing this. Needless to say, if you weren't making use of the Safe Spot before this boss fight, you're probably going to start using it more afterward.
• Monster Girl Quest has the Queen Harpy. Up until now, you could get by with "attack-heal" strategy. The Queen Harpy shows you that attacking without paying attention will get you stomped flat from that point on by having an insta-death counterattack. It drives home that you need to watch what the enemy is doing instead of attacking continuously.
• Mother 3:
  • Mr. Passion is generally the first boss where players realize just how vital debuffs, status effects, and item strategies are. Level Grinding and the Thunder Bomb trick will only get you so far here.
  • So, you breezed through Mr. Passion without too much trouble. Well, congrats. A couple chapters later, however, you're gonna meet the Jealous Bass, a tough Flunky Boss who works with his flunkies to hit Lucas and Boney multiple times per turn. Without finding the right combination of items and Lucas' limited PSI, you'll get stomped.
  • The very first chapter boss, the Mecha Drago, will let you know that bosses in this game won't tolerate being walked over. It can't even be hurt without using a turn to use the item that will reduce its defense to a high but reasonable level. It also is very strong and has a lot of health for that point in the game. Although you do have an NPC to assist, his role is mainly to give you some healing items. And you're still not done after taking it down - it will deal fatal damage to you after dying, which means you have to scroll through the post-battle text (and possibly a level-up) or die before actually succeeding.
• Neverwinter Nights: The Intellect Devourer is one of the first bosses you face. It has natural damage resistance and uses mental attacks that can daze or stun you or your party members, rendering them helpless. Also, the encounter itself has some rather unique mechanics, as well. During the battle, there are several dazed human guards standing about. If you cannot persuade them to leave, the Intellect Devourer will possess their bodies each time his current host is killed.
• Ni no Kuni has Moltaan. Not only does it hit like a truck, but it also has three area attacks that can and will wipe you out in a few short turns. Running around is viable for its Blazing Breath and Tail Flail, but you have to defend when it uses its Volcanic Roar (or pray that you get a critical hit to cancel it). There's also the fact that it's the only boss with a weak spot (its tail) and it's the first boss with an exploitable elemental weakness (Water/Ice spells and tricks) and Esther's Drongo and the Seed Sprite are likely to be the only party members you'll have at that point with the ability to efficiently do so, hinting at the fact that bosses from here onward will require a bit more strategy than simply spamming attacks, spells, and tricks.
• Octopath Traveler: Some of the Chapter 1 bosses are more difficult than others, if their opposing protagonist is the one you start with, requiring said protagonist to fight them alone.
  • Helgenish, Primrose's Chapter 1 boss. He has over 1,000 HP and can take out Primrose within only a few hits, and despite being weak to Daggers, killing him just with normal attacks is all but impossible. It doesn't help that Primrose is a Fragile Speedster not built for defense. You have to take advantage of Primrose's path action Allure in order to defeat him, or gather party members before starting Primrose's Chapter 1.
  • The Guardian of the First Flame, Ophilia's Chapter 1 boss. It has almost 2,000 HP, and when weakened enough will start summoning Dark Wisps that, if not defeated in time, will self-destruct and deal a large amount of damage to Ophilia. While it's weak to Staves, the Guardian resists Light, so Luminescence isn't going to be much help. This encourages you to take advantage of Ophilia's path action Guide in order to defeat it^note In particular, an NPC in the Flamesgrace tavern with the skill "Summon Winds" can break 3 of the Guardian's shields (it's weak to Wind) with a single use, or gather party members before starting Ophilia's Chapter 1.
  • Mikk and Makk, Tressa's Chapter 1 bosses. They're a Dual Boss with almost 1,700 HP between the two of them, and if you choose Tressa as your starting protagonist, you'll have to fight them two-on-one. Sure, they're both weak to Wind skills (which Tressa has), but they share no other weaknesses between them. When one of them reaches 50% HP, they'll use a skill that allows the other to intercept single-target physical attacks and skills. Tradewinds and Trade Tempest are certainly helpful, but it's recommended to gather party members before starting Tressa's Chapter 1. Cyrus in particular helps make the fight against them more manageable.
  • Typically, transitioning from one set of chapters to the next (i.e., finishing all the first chapters and then moving on to the second chapters, and so on) tends to coincide with a Difficulty Spike and ups the ante of the bosses appropriately. Due to the freeform nature of the game, the Level Scaling, and how you can do any chapter in any order, the Wake-Up Call Boss will likely be different for everyone, but the most commonly ones cited appear to be Hróðvitnir, the boss of Ophilia's Chapter 2, and Miguel, the boss of Alfyn's Chapter 3. Perhaps not coincidentally, these are the earliest bosses who are able to make themselves move more often in one turn.
• Octopath Traveler II players often find themselves challenged by Castti's Chapter 2 boss, Plukk. She has 7 shield points on her Break Meter paired with potent damage output, often able to two-shot characters. This in itself isn't ridiculous; the problem is that she's a Flunky Boss, and her two helpers are... Mikk and Makk. (There's no indication that these are the same characters; they might just be a Running Gag within the franchise.) When each of them is conscious (IE not Broken), they nullify half her weaknesses, meaning you can't Break her without Breaking one of them first; they each have 4 SP; they have pretty significant damage output. And the three work as a team: Plukk can designate targets for focus fire (and unless you manage to slip a heal spell in between attacks, that target will die), all three are able to buff each other, and they have a Combination Attack where all three of them charge special attacks. Mikk buffs Plukk, Makk debuffs your team, and Plukk just piles on the damage. To prevent this from happening, you have to Break all of them, which can require as many as 15 attacks, in one turn — or have one of them be already Broken when Plukk initiates the combo, reducing your overhead to a slightly more reasonable 11. (And while this franchise has a "Boost Point" system where you can, in fact, store extra moves for later use, the max you're allowed to use in a single turn is 16... and saving up those extra moves, instead of spending them on healing abilities to keep yourself in the game, can be challenging.)
• Odin Sphere: Baby Levanthon hits like a truck despite his small size. If your main strategy for dealing with enemies is hitting it until it dies, he will punish you heavily for it. Once you learn his tells and can reliably dodge his attacks, though, he's easily the least challenging in the game.
• OMORI: Space Ex-Boyfriend is the first challenge the player will meet at the beginning of the game. If you haven't understood how the Emotion System and Follow-Up works, get ready to see your party members toasted.
• Number 9 in Parasite Eve 2 serves as a wake up call boss. He has a paralyzing attack and a one hit kill attack. He also has massive amounts of HP to boot. If the player doesn't realize to use the electrical boxes on him, or fails to find the MP5 or grenade launcher, there's not a lot of hope to beat him.
• Pillars of Eternity has Lord Raedric, whom you can encounter as early as level 3, with a three—to-four man party. You can decide against fighting him, but otherwise, you will be going up against a hard-hitting, heavily armored boss, a bunch of his equally heavily armored flunkies, a couple archers, a Combat Medic priest, and a court wizard with Area of Effect damaging spells. Nothing in the entire castle (or, indeed, in the entire game until then) even comes close to this Difficulty Spike, which really pummels in the importance of choke points, crowd control, and prioritizing targets. On a larger scale, the mega dungeon under your own keep is comprised exclusively of entire Wake-Up Call Levels, that force you to invent new tactics on the fly to beat increasingly difficult monsters.
• Pokémon Flora Sky has Caitlin. She's only the second gym leader, but her shiny Delcatty will wreck you if you aren't prepared.
• Rakenzarn Tales has quite a few in different version.
  • Version 1-2: we have Buggy the Clown. He's not terribly strong, but he's your first solo fight with Kyuu, so you'll need to have learned how to use his Arxus Rouge class features, such as training for stat boosts outside of battle and switching equipment to suit the opponent, due to Buggy being immune to bladed weapons.
  • This is followed by the Blizzard Dragon. Here, more than the previous bosses, is where you learn about proper party composition, buffing, debuffing and exploiting enemy patterns and weaknesses. He's much stronger than the previous bosses to boot.
  • And one of the first Ultra Bosses is Asmodeous and Beelezebub. Both gals are very nasty and really hammer home how tough the game gets with its bonus bosses.
  • Version 4.1.1: Double-Head in Kyros' Route is one. Not only this snake has high HP and hits like a truck, it can attack twice and use 3 elements! This is the point where the game stops pulling its punches. You have to properly manage your party, switch party members at the right time, give them proper RK-0s, use buffs and debuffs, and exploit enemy patterns and weaknesses. If you haven't learned how the game works and play by its rules, Double-Head is going to decimate you in seconds.
• Rakenzarn Frontier Story has two:
  • Ronove. The previous bosses were manageable to fight, but the demon butler is your first real challenge. He only has one weakness, can buff himself, and has his very own Limit Break. If you haven't mastered the class system or don't pay attention to the way using buffs and debuffs, Ronove can destroy you very easily.
  • Solo and No. 9. You have two bosses to fight and they have their own strengths and weaknesses. They both can hit hard and they have their specific skills. Solo can hit all party members and inflict poison ailments and No. 9 buffs them up. If that's not bad enough, they also have their own Limit Breaks. Pay attention to their patterns and exploit their weaknesses, but you have to use your own buffs too. Otherwise, this is going to be one long fight and they could potentially one-shot you with their Limit Breaks.
• In Resonance of Fate, the first real boss "Tar Man" Will destroy your team repeatedly, until you master the combat system and learn that not every move needs to be a "Hero Action." Even then, he has a lot of armor and requires multiple death-defying passes to take down. To top it off, he will regenerate his health (but not his armor, thankfully) if you don't kill him fast enough.
• The Mark VIII Salamander at the beginning of Rogue Galaxy has three stages to break through, and your party members force you to fight solo for the final phase. Hope you stopped to buy extra healing potions.
• Sacred Earth - Promise: Balcruade and Zuleika are far more difficult than the Beholder boss, since they can easily exploit your characters' elemental weaknesses. The battle serves to teach the player how to do the same to them, as well as how to use auras to cover elemental weaknesses.
• Secret of Evermore has two bosses that will make you realize that yes, you do need to learn a bit more about this game's combat system if you want to reach the ending.
  • The first is Salabog, the massive sea serpent in Prehistoria. He has 2000 HP (compare to the previous boss's 600), he spawns mooks that can hurt you by touching you (they're made of FIRE), and he only emerges to spring an attack on you and to make more mooks. If you haven't learned how to use charged spear attacks, or haven't leveled your spear up enough to throw it at all, you're gonna be in for a long, painful, and ultimately futile battle.
  • The second is the Verminator, one of the later bosses of the medieval times world. This guy sits on a pile of crates, and will never come down, making him the first boss that you encounter which cannot be affected by regular attacks. He relentlessly uses status effect spells and attack spells on you, and, again, if you're no good with spear throwing, you're gonna die, since you'll run out of attack spells well before you get anywhere near killing him. You need to not only be very good with your spear, but also good with alchemy so you can cure the status afflictions he causes and protect against his attack spells. If, through some miracle, you've made it this far without learning about charged attacks, you're never going to win. The fact that he's placed at the end of the forest maze, and the fact that the inn and save point are so easily missed, add to the aggravation.
• Secret of Mana,
  • You literally cannot lose against the first boss, and the second is a piece of cake too. And then there's Spiky Tiger, who is considered by many players to be one of the toughest bosses in the game. This is probably due to his ability to inflict the burning status on your characters (paralyzed and taking continuous damage) as well as knocking them out with a hard-to-avoid physical attack. He also regularly jumps to the raised platforms on the sides where he can only be hit with the two ranged weapons you have — which, being weaker than the melee weapons, you may not have bothered using them, meaning you won't even have unlocked the charge attacks. AND you don't have any magic of your own yet.
  • When you first get to the ice country, you'll encounter a mid-boss, Boreal Face. The wake up call here is that once you obtained magic, most bosses were about spamming it until it died. Boreal Face, however as an absurdly high magic defense, and the most you can do against it with magic is 20-30 HP and it has around 1100HP. By the time you absolutely run out of MP for attack spells, Boreal Face will have over half of its HP left.
• The Bogeyman, in The Secret World, can be this for new players. The game relies on mobility and positioning far more than the average MMORPG, and if you haven't gotten that by the time you fight him in the game's second major zone, you're gonna have a bad time. The damaging wave has a buildup that should be familiar enough and easy to avoid if you're paying attention. His "purple rain" is also pretty straightforward, just don't stand anywhere that's about to explode. Much trickier is a one-two punch of attacks that require you to either get a certain distance away, or be within that same distance to avoid. Even if you're good for that, his final attack at roughly 1/4 health will probably kill you in one hit and covers most of the arena. It has a huge buildup and is obviously going to hurt, but given other games' use of Homing Boulders, many players don't think to just stand on the other side of a rock.
• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: The second battle with Genichiro marks the spot where the player MUST get good at deflection and the Perilous Attack counters. Every boss before him has some sort of trick that can be used; Gyoubu is extra weak to the Firecracker and Lady Butterfly can be cheesed by spamming certain moves such as Nightjar Slash or sidestepping attacks. Genichiro has no such gimmicks — you either parry his attacks, or you die.
• Many players seem to have problems with the Executioner on their first pass through Skies of Arcadia, but he's a breeze on repeated attempts. He's the first boss who can finish off your characters from even relatively high levels of health, and so he teaches players to keep their HP high at all times in boss fights. There's also the power of Increm. A big part of what makes the Executioner a pain is that he comes almost immediately after another boss, Bleigock, whose main strategy is poisoning your party and is a bit of a wakeup call boss in its own right. The game gives no indication that the Executioner fight is coming, so if you don't already know about the Executioner, there's a good chance you didn't heal up and save after you beat Bleigock.
• SoulBlazer has Solid Arm as the first boss (who becomes the Superboss in Illusion of Gaia). Until then, you can mostly just breeze through the first level, but then suddenly the boss is there and his triple-fireball attacks deal some heavy damage, are unstoppable, and fire almost non-stop. You need a decent tactic to get him when his guard is down. It also doesn't help because unlike Illusion of Gaia, it's possible to somewhat underlevel in SoulBlazer, making your task even harder.
• The fight with the strippers in the Peppermint Hippo in South Park: The Fractured but Whole becomes this in stage 2; getting to Classi will have her summon Spontaneous Bootay, a plus-sized stripper who acts as an Advancing Wall of Doom that will one hit kill the New Kid and Captain Diabetes if she gets too close. She attacks on a timer that constantly charges during character turns, is invincible to any and all damage and effects, and all the other strippers start adding knockback to their attacks to drive the heroes back towards Bootay. The player must act fast and keep moving or be crushed to death by her massive butt.
• Cademmimu in Star Wars: The Old Republic was full of these. While not the first flashpoint after The Esseles or Black Talon, everything between it (Athiss, Hammer Station, Mandalorian Raiders) was full of mechanics that veered between simple tank and spank, Shoot the Medic First, or were, after World of Warcraft, simple in nature and a lot of players would easily figure them out. Cademmimu on the other hand, required players to kite mobs around to avoid crowd control or Death by a Thousand Cuts and pay attention to environmental hazards. The final boss of Cademmimu was a notorious newbie trap in the day, as he would make 3/4ths of the stage an almost instant death trap, forcing the players to run over to the safe segment.
• Suikoden: Almost everyone agrees that the Zombie Dragon wasn't just a hard boss for the level, it's a really hard boss in general. It attacks your whole team at once, does a large amount of damage, and has a lot of health. If anyone in your team dies, or if you don't distribute potions, gem (and odds are, at this point, you don't).
• In Terranigma, after four towers with pathetic excuses for bosses, the fifth tower has a sudden wake-up call in the form of Shadowkeeper, a giant demonic spider/crab hybrid thing. This monstrosity has serious HP and equally serious attacks to match, and going up against it underleveled is suicidal.
• Trials of Mana:
  • At approximately the mid-point of the game, there is a series of seven Benevodons that need killin'. They are always of increasing difficulty, but the order is up to you. Regardless, the jump somewhere between the second and fourth Benevodon will always be HUGE. This serves to force you to attain or come close to attaining your first Prestige Class.
  • Zehnoa has considerable spell firepower and two resilient, respawning mooks helping it. It can easily overwhelm a novice, but if you know how to control your fighters and bought power-up items in Beiser beforehand, it'll be a cakewalk.
  • The first battle against a fused Bil and Ben, which occurs immediately after the above-mentioned Zhenoa. While the player does get the usual post-boss-battle full heal and has time to open the storage and bring out more items if necessary, this battle can still kick ass. They are the first of enemies that can actually use the higher-tier attacks that the party learn — specifically, they use Shadow Menace that can become a Ninja-classed Hawkeye's attack. That hits pretty hard, and can easily put a party member into yellow health. And they eventually split into two copies, so they tend to spam Shadow Menace on one member twice, which pretty much spells doom. They also like to use attacks that lower the party's accuracy.
  • Machine Golems. These will quickly teach you that direct damage spells are not the Game-Breaker they were in the previous game.
• Qudamah the Jackal can be this for Two Worlds II players, as he's very easy to run into by accident while exploring and completing quests in the first act of the game and is considerably stronger than anything else you fought so far. The quest leading up to him is extra deceptive in that it makes you go after a bunch of weak Varns in a mine, lulling you into a false sense of security only to then throw this unholy canine-faced terror at you without warning. Hope you didn't save in the mine by the way (or have a backup save if you did), as you can't get out without killing Qudamah.
• Undertale has several:
  • Dogamy and Dogaressa are oftentimes the cause of the first death to even more skilled players, due to them being the first enemy that requires use of multiple ACTs to end the battle peacefully (Roll Around, Sniff, Pet), utilizing blue attacks in close proximity to regular attacks, and their axe attack, which covers most of the bullet board and requires precise movement to dodge.
  • Papyrus can be this on all the playthroughs:
    • On a neutral or pacifist route, he is the first enemy to introduce unique combat mechanics in the form of his BLUE attack, as well as the first foe to have a progressively more difficult attack pattern instead of simply repeating two or three attack waves, unlike the previous boss who simply relied on a handful of attacks and vanilla combat mechanics. While he's still not difficult, and the battle can by bypassed if you lose three times, he's never-the-less a pretty sudden warning that bosses from here on out won't be holding your hand or making their attacks miss like Toriel did.
    • On the Genocide route, the same effect is achieved but in the complete opposite manner. For any players justifying their actions under the guise of "self-defense", Papyrus immediately dismantles that excuse by refusing to fight you at all. Killing him is the first unambiguously evil action in the Genocide route and is a test to see if players are willing to continue down the path they've set themselves upon.
  • Undyne also serves this role no matter which route you take.
    • Players aiming to play as a Pacifist will have to fight a relatively difficult boss with low stats, and must realize that they can't spare her; they'll have to evade her long enough to get to Hotland and give her water when she collapses from the heat.
    • Those more willing to resort to violence will be instead faced by increasingly difficult attacks as they stand and fight back, especially if they Challenge her to strengthen her attacks. She's also the first boss who doesn't go easy on the player — unlike Toriel who makes her attacks avoid you when you're weakened, and Papyrus who harmlessly captures you on defeat and spares you outright after three failed attempts, Undyne will kill you and send you back to your last save if you arse up the fight.
    • Finally, Those who have killed everything possible up to this point will kill her in one hit, like every other boss, only for her to come back as Undyne the Undying, with faster and stronger attacks that will prove a challenge to even a Genocide player, making her one of two challenging battles on that route.
• Vagrant Story doesn't feature a single easy boss, but at least the first few don't require much skill beyond picking the right weapon type and not standing right in front of them when they try to hit you. Then, after around 3 hours of gameplay, you finally escape the first dungeon and reach the above-ground part of the city. Including the first human boss — a priest general — two screens away from the dungeon gate. For the first time, you're really going to need those armor spells, reaction abilities, and risk-reducing potions.
• Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption had Mercurio, a Cappadocian librarian who was just a little bit overwhelming, as he would chain-cast an area of effect spell that had good chances to affect both of your characters, deal major damage, and induce a frenzy (i.e. you lose control of the character, who just starts spamming powers and attacks at random). Compounded by the fact that, at this point in the game, you have likely not spent XP to upgrade your vampiric powers... He was, however, tweaked down in a patch and is now quite beatable.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines features Bishop Vick, who you can fight very early on. Most of your boss fights up to now have been with melee fighters in areas with lots of cover to hide or disappear behind. Vick, on the other hand, is incredibly fast, wields a shotgun that he's very good with, and even if you run behind the scant cover, he can see through your invisibility power. He's a pushover if you wait to fight him until you've become more powerful, but he will absolutely shred a low-level character, and there's no warning given that he's going to be so hard.
• Vay has the battle against Krager's Wind Elemental in Mt. Bole. It can deal two physical attacks per turn and use a variety of lightning-elemental spells on you (including the dreaded Megablast, an Area of Effect attack that's almost guaranteed to KO one or both of your Squishy Wizards). Not only is it a Damage-Sponge Boss with about 5000 HP, but your own magic spells will have little effect on it, so your best options are to keep smacking it with your weapons and hope that it doesn't feel like Megablasting your party.
• The Gnoll Chieftain, the boss of "The Decisive Battle" quest, is many Vindictus players' first introduction to just how tough the bosses of the game can get. If you try to take this guy like the rather easy bosses that came before him, you're going to get owned in short order. He is the first boss to make extensive use of smash attacks, which are more powerful than regular attacks, can lay you out with just one hit, and cannot be blocked with Fiona's shield without a special skill that you only learn after defeating him for the first time. His big-ass hammer takes off a LOT of HP with its smash attacks, often breaking your armor in the process (and trying to repair your armor with two tons of big red beast bearing down on you is no easy task!). He can also debuff your strength, reducing the effectiveness of your attacks and making it harder to pick things up and hurl them at him. Players taking this guy on must learn to read the boss's behavior in order to determine what's coming so that they can get the hell out of the way, as well as the use of things like spears and chains to stun the boss so that they can get off their combos and do damage before the boss recovers and brings the hammer to bear again. Needless to say, while you can solo him with difficulty, this guy is best taken with a party that knows what the hell it's doing.
• Tharzog, the first boss in War in the North is a nasty surprise for ill-prepared players. He's assisted by hordes of respawning mooks, has a huge amount of health and all his attacks are unblockable. If you haven't mastered dodging attacks and using your abilities then expect to die a lot. Worse still, once you enter the battle there is no way of escaping to buy supplies or repair equipment which can turn a rather tough fight into a gruelling That One Boss.
• Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader: The final boss of Chapter 1, a Word Bearer Chaos Space Marine. Despite the Mass "Oh, Crap!" it inspires, it isn't that hard to take down... for a well-built, well-equipped, and well-optimized party. However, parties that have been sleepwalking through the game will struggle to put out enough damage to stop it from destroying the shuttles that will get them off-world before it becomes a daemon world.
• The Hellhound at the end of Act I of The Witcher is one of these. The player can be easily stunned by it while its pack of barghests chomp away at their leisure, even with strong Group attack skills. One good blast of Aard can set up a one-shot kill, a feat impossible with later bosses. The battle also shows that some allies can be unkillable in battle. It also shows just how helpful alchemy is, as the right oils and potions can make the boss a walk in the park.
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings involves many different mid-bosses, who will clean the floor with you if you don't prepare before fights and learn fast:
  • The Kracken mid-boss is an unholy combination of giant stomping tentacles and nauseating venom. If you didn't do as a Witcher does and prepare before the fight, you have to learn to trap and dodge the beast's super-tentacles in mid-progression, and avoid its near-fatal and blinding poison. Even with the preparation, the fight is the first real enemy encounter in the game that is alien and overpowering.
  • Mid-boss Letho is one hell of a fight. By this point, you have to know how a Witcher prepares, fights, and improvises, because Letho will do the same. As his game description implies, Letho will make preparations with a mana shield to prevent slamming on his weak spots (he becomes invincible for about twenty seconds), and THEN charges in because you literally can't do damage to him, and will use 'frag grenade' bombs if you decide to run away and attack from a distance. He's a powerful fighter, and even if you play dirty he'll still be a major threat from a distance because of his mastery of elemental magic and bombs. You either have to be a good enough duelist to render his preparations useless, or be constantly alert for magic attacks and incoming grenades.
  • The optional boss in Act III will grind you alive if you decide to fight him. You've mastered everything except an attack by a freaking field commander. If you don't deal with the gargoyle reinforcements, he'll pummel you with fire magic. And all of this is considered a prelude to the giant dragon you'll have to fight as the final boss!
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt:
  • Nithral of the Wild Hunt walks the line between this and That One Boss, as he will kick your teeth in if you're not properly prepared and still comes early enough in the game to pose a real challenge for you, especially if you haven't yet mastered the art of dodging and alchemy preparation. Adding to that, you meet him right after defeating a Mid-Boss and your health may already be drained. Now, imagine a gamer who still had no idea that potions could be replenished via meditating and you've won yourself some Lessons, learned the hard way.
  • The Hearts of Stone expansion made its combat harder and more tactically involving than the base game's— even the new regions' basic wildlife (like the wild boars) forced players to use different tactics than they would've when fighting wolves in Velen—but the "Frog Prince" in Oxenfurt's sewers really punishes players who've gotten too used to the base game's "Quen, Dodge, Repeat" strategy.
• Xord in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, specifically his first phase, serves simultaneously as this and That One Boss, being the only time in the game that you'll really have to knuckle your way through a Mechon fight without being able to use the eponymous MacGuffin to its full effect. If you are not properly leveled, and haven't mastered chain attacks, well, you'd better fix that, or you're not getting past the Ether Mine. Thankfully, you only need to bring down a handful of his HP before the battle transitions to the much-easier second phase. This serves to make sure the player has sufficiently learned how to manage their team, a skill that will be needed for the rest of the game.
• The Wrothian definitely fit the bill in Xenoblade Chronicles X, as this is the first story boss since Skells became available that forces you to fight your opponent on foot, and will punish players who may have neglected their on-foot builds just because their Skell could easily destroy most foes smaller than them. They are all extremely fast, extremely tough and Ga Jiarg has a One-Hit Kill move to boot. And then they get into Skells, where they are just as quick but even harder to kill, and while they do allow you to use your Skell in this phase, it may tell you that it's time to replace your starting Skell.
• There are a number of examples in the early chapters of Xenoblade Chronicles 2:
  • For Chapter 2, the fight against Morag is a step up from the previous boss fights. While Dughall was complacent with his Blowdown attacks which can be prevented with a wind blade combo, Morag is a great deal more unpredictable, and can last quite a bit longer.
  • At the end of Chapter 3 is a fight against Malos, Akhos, and their blades. Either Malos will taunt your party into wasting attacks on his beefy setup, or Akhos will lock your blades out, costing you the chance to use them in combat.
  • Lila's a lot tougher than she looks. Her second fight in Chapter 4 might bring unprepared players to a standstill. She has many counters and shields, and becomes a lot more aggressive when she Turns Red. A chain attack finisher with plenty of preparation might make the difference between victory and death.
• Xenogears:
  • Redrum is notorious for giving players grief, to the point of That One Boss territory if they haven't taken the time to not only invest the time in building their deathblows and the required grinding to gain access to them, using spells that increase resistance to elemental attacks and building the AP for the combo command. He has more health than the previous two bosses combined (and they were gear battles, to boot), but he also has an attack which can one-shot a party member and heal him for the same amount of damage he deals, a fire attack that hits the entire party (and heals him) and his physical attacks hit hard.
  • Calamity is the first boss in the game that isn't playing around. By this point, you have access to your first Gear upgrades, and Bart's Wild Smile ether technique. This is the game's way of forcing you to do more than simply spam X attacks. Try that on Calamity and it will thoroughly wreck your shit. Also, if you didn't do what the characters suggested you do and upgrade your Gears earlier (namely their engines), you won't stand a chance.
  • The gear fight against Dominia is kinder, but also pretty painful, as it is the first gear boss where healing the gears becomes possible, making it essential to not only equip the one you got onto Fei's gear, but learn how to balance Fuel for healing, damage and boosting the gear's speed, while taking her out and the add (which does heavy damage if you fail to, hence the boost). Fuel availability is still at a premium at this point.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon has two noteworthy ones:
  • Reiji Ishioda, piloting a wrecking ball-equipped crane, is the boss of Chapter 9. You have fought a similar opponent before with the Excavator in Chapter 6, but this time it's tougher, deals massively more damage with attacks that usually cover a massive AOE, and still have all the resistances and attack restrictions of non-human enemies. Passing this fight is effectively a test to see if the player is able to work with a tanky opponent that regularly dishes out near one-hit-kill attacks.
  • Goro Majima and Taiga Saejima, the Climax Boss of Chapter 12. Both of them hit hard, have multiple phases, and cover each other with non-overlapping weaknesses. They are also noticeably over-levelled compared to where your party should be at this point in the game, which is a hint that you really should give the recently-unlocked Sotenbori Battle Arena a try. Beating Majima and Saejima demand that you have a well-balanced party capable of targeting both of their weaknesses, with both strong single-target and crowd attacks, and that you don't neglect your items and support abilities.
• Your Bizarre Adventure (a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Fan Game) stops pulling punches once the player fights Fugo. His Stand's power creates massive poison clouds that damage you over time, and he has a habit of barraging you afterwards to keep you trapped in there. Defeating him requires a significant amount of agility and knowledge of the game's dash mechanic, something not necessary for any previous boss.