History DemonicSpiders / FinalFantasy

*** It helps having really high Magic Defense, which, [[GameBreaker thanks to the game's leveling system]], is really easy.

*** It also helps having really high Magic Defense, which, [[GameBreaker thanks to the game's leveling system]], is really easy.

** The succubus type enemies in Ch. 10, thought fairly weak on their own, they have a special AI that makes them all attack the same target, if you wind in a group of three or more, have a medic out in your starting paradigm, or you're screwed.

*** In some installments, they also have an ability called "Chef's Knife", which '''will''' kill you deader than dead if Everyone's Grudge doesn't work.

** Not to mention some of the rare non-story battles that can be an absolute bear. The most talked about of these is the 11 monk battle on Grog Hill. For those unfamiliar with the game, monks have the most versatile skillset in the game, having high attack, a ranged move (that hits multiple people), a 100% hit move, a healing move, a revival move and a move to get rid of status effects, all of which have no charge time. In addition they have decent speed and range and can be pretty dangerous one at a time. When there are twice as many on the map as you have people in your team at the same or higher level than your highest leveled character, be prepared to die and die horribly.
*** Oh, and, they're all wearing gear that makes their ranged move ''heal each other''. They can knock you down and stand themselves back up using the same command. And do.
** Also Chocobos near the beginning of the game can act as DemonicSpiders on their own, having higher attack and movement than any of your beginning classes, a counter attack that you won't be able to get until later on without ample grinding, and healing to boot. Needless to say running into a pack of these during the first few levels of the game spells instant death. Later on they are demoted to merely GoddamnBats as they are still annoying, but far outclassed by the stronger classes in the game. However, Red Chocobos and Black Chocobos remain DemonicSpiders until the end of the game, the later having a powerful physical attack, a strong ranged attack and the ability to fly, and the former having a high hitting 100% ranged move with no charge time. Coupled with high speed they can easily take out a healer or wizard before anyone on your team gets a chance to move.
*** There's a story battle in the game where you fight a group of chocobos of somewhat randomly generated colors. If you're unlucky, four Red Chocobos show up and owns at least half of your team before you can fight back.

** The Adamantoise Family, which you probably shouldn't be fighting the minute you get to [[ItWasHisSled Gran Pulse]], can KO you in one fell stomp.
*** These are 50 feet tall, non-aggressive and very easy to avoid, so they aren't a problem unless you [[WhatAnIdiot intentionally]] [[SchmuckBait attack one]].
*** As Sazh will occasionally say, "That thing could Gran the Pulse right out of us!"
** A lot of monsters on Gran Pulse qualify, unless you've done some serious [[LevelGrinding Level Grinding]]. The Behemoth Kings seem easy at first, but right before they die they stand up, heal all of their HP and start using a saw blade attack to kill characters in one hit. Later on Gran Pulse you have to fight [[MookMaker Boxed Phalanx]] which are accompanied by small armies of robotic minions with a nasty tendency to gang up on the party leader. They continuously summon more minions during the fight, so your only hope of winning is to take out the big one as fast as possible. Unlike the other monsters on Gran Pulse, you HAVE to fight these to get through, they block the passages and there's no way around.
*** The Boxed Phalanx actually only summons reinforcements if you kill any of the Hoplites present at the start of the battle, so you just have to make sure to target ''only'' the Phalanx. It's still tough though, because it will cast buffs on the Hoplites.

** Back on Cocoon, there are various PSICOM enemies to worry about. The last level has the most advanced form of the game's first midboss; [[spoiler: three of them in one battle, to be exact. You'll want a few Deceptisols.]] And in CH.12, outside the obvious wallbangingly-hard enemies lay the Inquisitrixes, who turn most examples of GameFavoredGender on their head by hitting harder and faster than their male counterparts. So hard and fast, in fact, that one attack cycle from more than one of them will leave you restarting the battle... again... and again...
** Spare a TP and use Dispelga after they cast Manadrive Veil. Then laugh at their weakness.

* Mantodea/Greater Mantis in ''FinalFantasyVI''. Their standard physical attacks will likely do over 3000 damage, killing any character that isn't significantly overleveled. You can avoid this by casting Vanish on your party, but that leaves you open for their dreaded Rippler move, which, due to a glitch, can cause Shadow/Relm to PERMANENTLY lose [[RightHandAttackDog Interceptor]]. And they're all over the world map as random encounters. Your best bet is to simply stay the f*ck away from these bastards (either use the GlobalAirship or the [[EncounterRepellant Moogle Charm]]) as you don't get anything that special (save Imp equipment) from fighting them. If you are feeling masochistic, the Brachiosaurs and Tyranosaurs in the Dinosaur Forest are a safer bet anyways.

* In ''FinalFantasyX'', you only have to fight Great Malboros one at a time. Great! But the Great Malboros that infest the [[BonusDungeon Omega Ruins]] ''always'' ambush the party, and have an 80% chance of casting Bad Breath in their first turn. The only reliable ways to survive them are to equip [[SquishyWizard Yuna]] with a First Strike weapon and have her [[SummonMagic Summon an Aeon]] (or, alternatively, have whoever has First Strike switch in Tidus and his Escape ability), which are immune to status effects and can weather the Malboro's other attack, a very powerful spitting blast, long enough to kill it or run away (or equip someone else with a first strike weapon and swap them out for Yuna), or to equip someone with a first strike weapon and a Delay Attack ability to delay the Malboro's turn enough for the player to get a few hits in.
** Great Malboros aren't that bad once you level enough and have the Celestial Weapons. The REAL Demonic Spiders of the game were the Demon Monoliths in the final Dungeon on your way to [[spoiler:Jecht]] and the upgraded Behemoths. The Monoliths had Curse, which gave you a crap load of Status effects that were basically undodgeable, and the Behemoths had a Death Attack that killed you too. And to top off the Monoliths, they rarely showed up alone. They almost always showed up in Pairs or Trios. It doesn't help that they possessed the attack power of your average endgame [[BossInMookClothing boss]] and always managed to hit with its spammed attacks, which, according to the enemy data, [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard should have incredibly low accuracy.]]
** Powerful characters and weapons only make things worse, actually. Bad Breath inflicts many status effects, but the only three of any importance in this scenario are blind, poison, and confusion. This will cause your characters to swat at one another and miss, failing to knock one-another out of confusion unless they're lucky enough to land a hit, and even this will only make them kill one-another if they're too powerful. Because they're also poisoned, and because poison TookALevelInBadass for Final Fantasy X, they'll be losing 1/4 of their maximum health as they swat at one another fruitlessly. If you're ambushed with this attack and you don't have any resistant armor or a weapon with First Strike equipped, it's entirely possible to lose this turn-based game without ever having touched the controller.

** Sorcerers. The goddamn Sorcerers. The entire Ice Cave is the hardest part of the game because of these bastards. At effectively the halfway point of the game, you have these Mind Flayer rip offs that do a 4 hit attack which does only about 1 damage per hit. It also has the chance for causing instant death—and your [=ProRings=], which are supposed to protect you against stuff like this, don't do ''squat'' against it. If that isn't bad enough, its other attack is a paralyzing attack that hits everyone in the party. That means it can paralyze your party as it picks you apart. And the best part? They come in groups of 4.
*** You are supposed to flee from them. Unless you know you will win in round one, it's not worth the risk.
**** Unless you get ''ambushed'' by them, in which case you're lucky to even ''get'' to Round One.
**** And don't forget the Sorcerors' lesser kin, the Wizards, who bear the distinction of being one of the very few enemies that you ''can't'' flee from. Ever. When you first encounter them (in the infamous Marsh Cave, no less) Wizards can shred almost any class other than Fighters, and by the time you reach the Ice Cave you randomly encounter Wizards in groups of at least five or six. If you're unfortunate enough to lose party members to the Sorcerors, better hope the RandomNumberGod doesn't toss in the Wizards to finish the job.
*** In the [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Temple of Fiends, 2000 years ago]], Sorcerers come in groups of ''nine''. And they generally swarm the next-to-last floor, between Tiamat and [[FinalBoss Chaos]]. Even a max-level party armed with [[InfinityMinusOneSword Excalibur]], the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Masmune]], [[HellFire NUKE]] and [[HolyHandGrenade FADE]] is taking its life into its hands by going into that floor.
*** Appropriate enough that Wizards were late dubbed "Piscodemon"s. The Sorcerers were also deemed [[InuYasha full-fledged]] "Mindflayers", but, really, don't they live up to the moniker?
*** It makes sense that the [=ProRing=] wouldn't protect your characters from the instant-death attack since the monster is ''[[FridgeLogic eating their brains]]''.

** People somehow forget the most demonic of all from the original ''Final Fantasy'': [[BossInMooksClothing WarMECH]]. With stats comparable to the final boss, and an attack that can take out two or three party members in a single shot (which he can use every round, of course), many players trade [=WarMECH=] stories the way others tell war stories. And while rare, he is still just a random encounter—if you think your luck is bad running into just one of these, just imagine how much the game hates you should you run into two on the same trip. The Playstation remake actually made him worse, doubling his stats ''and'' giving it the ability to regenerate 200 hit points a round. Oh, to top it off? The same area has the aforementioned demonic Sorcerors/Mindflayers.

** Same game, Mages in the [[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon underground of the Moon]]. Especially packs of three that surprise you. Blizzaga, Blizzaga, Blizzaga. DS meets wall.
** Let's not forget the Armored Fiends, also in TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon. They have Flamethrower (an absurdly powerful fire attack on the whole team), Beam (an even more absurdly powerful, non-elemental attack on one person), and most annoyingly, Self-Destruct, which will not only knock out whoever gets hit with it 90% of the time, but will also result in you receiving NO EXPERIENCE OR GIL for all your hard work. Annoyingly, their turn always seems to come up right after you get them under 9999 HP, at which point they will almost always Self-Destruct. The worst part? They're one of the carriers of the added Tail items that you can trade for nice equipment, but have a 0.4% drop rate. That means hours upon hours of fighting these bastards if you like to aim for 100% completion.
*** They're fortunately vulnerable to Stop—bet you thought it was a UselessUsefulSpell, eh?
**** Actually, no. Immune to every status but Slow and Sap. Although it is worth noting that if you ''don't'' Thundaga them, they self-destruct less often.
** The Blue and Red Dragons of the last dungeon have devastating attacks that hit all party members, and worse yet, are not weak against the elements that fire- and ice-element monsters would be weak against.
*** The Blue Dragons aren't that bad—they can be [[UselessUsefulSpell Stopped]], and Stop will always connect, leaving you to heal from Icestorm (a nasty hit-all ability) and beat on them at your leisure. The Red Dragons, however—they have two attacks: a standard physical attack that will hit the tank for around 1000 points of damage, and Thermal Rays, which hits the entire party for around 2000 points of damage a piece. To put this in perspective: the tank will have (unless you [[GameBreaker augmented him]]) around 4500 HP. The [[SquishyWizard mages]] will have around 2500 HP. The Red Dragon is immune to Stop, but ''can'' be Slowed, and also Berserked to make him use only his physical attack (which will now hit for 2000 points of damage). The trouble is, though, that the person with access to Berserk and Slow is also the only person with access to the healing spells, so in practice, fights go like this: The Red Dragon casts Thermal Rays, everyone scrambles to heal and rezz, the healer finally gets an open turn, the player goes to select Slow or Berserk from the menu—the Red Dragon uses Thermal Rays AGAIN, the party drops everything to heal, rinse and repeat until death.

** The Shield Wyrms in the Cerobi Steppe don't use cheap tricks like Curse--they will beat the shit out of you ''legitimately'' (for the most part). They're a regular enemy, and there are TONS of them in the various Steppe zones--but they have over sixty-''thousand'' HP, more than any other regular monster in the game and more than a fair few of the bosses, marks, and rare monsters too. The HP is complemented by high defense and magic defense stats, and the ability to further augment those stats, ''and'' the ability to regain a third of the life bar with an unblockable, virtually unstoppable move called Restore. And offensively? It's a hard hitter with many area-of-effect moves, including the -aga spells and Breath, which can inflict Sap, plus its normal physical can inflict Petrify and combo with frequency. And--this cannot be stressed enough--they're ''everywhere''. Can't throw a stone in Cerobi without hitting (and subsequently aggroing) one of these. And Cerobi Steppe is a biiiiig area. To say it gets aggravating is an understatement.
*** They are susceptible to Oiling, so oil them up and roast them with fire magic. Their defenses aren't going to be worth jack.
** The goddamn Reavers in [[BonusDungeon Pharos Penumbra]]. At level sixty they can smack a third of your health bar away and have a nasty habit of walking into battle with Haste and/or Protect (and sometimes Bravery) and a habit of chucking magical Technicks at your party whenever they get low on health. And they always come in groups of three or more. And you need to kill ''tons'' of them to advance the dungeon. '''FFFFFFFFFFFFFF-''

** A lot of monsters on Gran Pulse qualify, unless you've done some serious [[LevelGrinding Level Grinding]]. The Behemoth Kings seem easy at first, but right before they die they stand up, heal all of their HP and start using a saw blade attack to kill characters in one hit. Later on Gran Pulse you have to fight [[MookMaker Boxed Centurions]] which are accompanied by small armies of robotic minions with a nasty tendency to gang up on the party leader. They continuously summon more minions during the fight, so your only hope of winning is to take out the big one as fast as possible. Unlike the other monsters on Gran Pulse, you HAVE to fight these to get through, they block the passages and there's no way around.

** The Shield Wyrms in the Cerobi Steppe don't use cheap tricks like Curse--they will beat the shit out of you ''legitly'' (for the most part). They're a regular enemy, and there are TONS of them in the various Steppe zones--but they have over sixty-''thousand'' HP, more than any other regular monster in the game and more than a fair few of the bosses, marks, and rare monsters too. The HP is complemented by high defense and magic defense stats, and the ability to further augment those stats, ''and'' the ability to regain a third of the life bar with an unblockable, virtually unstoppable move called Restore. And offensively? It's a hard hitter with many area-of-effect moves, including the -aga spells and Breath, which can inflict Sap, plus its normal physical can inflict Petrify and combo with frequency. And--this cannot be stressed enough--they're ''everywhere''. Can't throw a stone in Cerobi without hitting (and subsequently aggroing) one of these. And Cerobi Steppe is a biiiiig area. To say it gets aggravating is an understatement.

* Mantodea/Greater Mantis in Final Fantasy VI. Their standard physical attacks will likely do over 3000 damage, killing any character that isn't significantly overleveled. You can avoid this by casting Vanish on your party, but that leaves you open for their dreaded Rippler move, which, due to a glitch, can cause Shadow/Relm to PERMANANTLY lose Interceptor. And they're all over the world map as random encounters. Your best bet is to simply stay the f*ck away from these bastards (either use the Airship or the Moogle Charm) as you don't get anything that special (save Imp equipment) from fighting them. If you are feeling masochistic, the Brachiosaurs and Tyranosaurs in the Dinosaur Forest are a safer bet anyways.

* In ''FinalFantasyV'' we have the Gil Turtle. At the time you encounter it, you don't have nearly the XP or skills to defeat it. And it lures you in with a hallway that doubles your gil with each step you take. It has amazing HP, hits very very hard, is very fast, and makes short work of your party. It took quite a bit of reloading and messing around with available skills to defeat this bastard. It's vulnerable to ice and undead, so I managed it by making my ninja (with the !Image skill) into a white mage, equipped with a Cure Staff. And it took for-bloody-ever!

** The Imps in the Dawn of Souls remake are this, constantly spamming "Confuse 16" on the party. In this game, Confusion does not wear off if you are hit and if your party happens to be dual-wielding, then they'll destroy each other. Your only chance to survive this is being immune to confusion. The problem is that there is no equipment at that point that can resist Confusion, the Imps come in packs of six or so, and they have extremely high speed. In addition, [[MarathonLevel this is one of the longest dungeons in the game, with three bosses, a fourth optional one,]] [[ThatOneLevel damaging floors and the just-as-demonic Devil's Bloom enemy, which casts the same Confusion 16 spell.]] Oh, and if you wear out your MP to the point where you can't cast Teleport fighting the Imps, Blooms and bosses and save your game after having beaten the [[PointOfNoReturn first part of the Dungeon]], get ready to [[UnwinnableByDesign start again from scratch.]] This is 3/4ths of the way through a game generally considered NintendoHard, even in the toned down port! Long story short, Imps (and Devil are one of the worst parts of [[ThatOneLevel this whole level]].

** The Imps did this for me in the Dawn of Souls remake, constantly spamming "Confuse 16" on the party. Your only chance in hell is being immune to confusion.
*** To elaborate on the above poster's case, there is no equipment in the game (At least up to that point) that can resist Confusion, they come in packs of six or so, they have extremely high speed, in this game, Confusion does not wear off if you are hit and if your Party happens to be dual-wielding, then they'll destroy eachother (Doing about a few hundred damage per shot when 1000 is considered a lot of HP). In addition, to this [[MarathonLevel This is one of the longest Dungeons in the game, with 3 Bosses, a fourth optional one,]] [[ThatOneLevel damaging floors and also posessing the equally annoying Devil's Bloom which casts the same Confusion spell?]]. Oh and if you wear out your MP to the point where you can't cast Teleport fighting the Imps, Blooms and Bosses and save your game after having beaten the [[PointOfNoReturn first part of the Dungeon]], get ready to [[UnwinnableByDesign start again from scratch]] (This is 3/4ths of the way through a game generally considered NintendoHard, even in the toned down port. Long story short, a whole ThatOneLevel.

*** The goddamn Reavers in [[BonusDungeon Pharos Penumbra]]. At level sixty they can smack a third of your health bar away and have a nasty habit of walking into battle with Haste and/or Protect (and sometimes Bravery) and a habit of chucking magical Technicks at your party whenever they get low on health. And they always come in groups of three or more. And you need to kill ''tons'' of them to advance the dungeon. '''FFFFFFFFFFFFFF-''

These DemonicSpiders hope you brought plenty of Phoenix Downs.

*** To elaborate on the above poster's case, there is no equipment in the game (At least up to that point) that can resist Confusion, they come in packs of six or so, they have extremely high speed, in this game, Confusion does not wear off if you are hit and if your Party happens to be dual-wielding, then they'll destroy eachother (Doing about a few hundred damage per shot when 1000 is considered a lot of HP). In addition, to this [[MarathonLevel This is one of the longest Dungeons in the game, with 3 Bosses, a fourth optional one,]] [[ThatOneLevel damaging floors and also posessing the equally annoying Devil's Bloom which casts the same Confusion spell?]]. Oh and if you wear out your MP to the point where you can't cast Teleport fighting the Imps, Blooms and Bosses and save your game after having beaten the [[PointOfNoReturn first part of the Dungeon]], get ready to [[UnwinnableByDesign start again from scratch]] (This is 3/4ths of the way through a game generally considered NintendoHard, even in the toned down port]]. Long story short, a whole ThatOneLevel.