History HopelessBossFight / RoleplayingGames

* In ''{{Persona 4}}'', the fight with Shadow Rise mixes this with BaitAndSwitchBoss. Halfway through the fight, Shadow Rise begins to "scan" your party, becoming immune to all your attacks in the process. [[spoiler:Teddie unleashes a DesperationAttack to save you]], leading to Rise acquiring her Persona. It then becomes apparent that the actual boss in this dungeon is really [[spoiler:Shadow Teddie]].

** The final boss of ''{{Persona 4}}'' pulls this ''twice''. Ironically, your EleventhHourSuperpower then turns you into one for them. A harsher example is the final boss of ''{{Persona 3}}'': [[spoiler: even though you become immune to the OneHitKill, the only way to stop Nyx is to sacrifice yourself. To be fair, you technically win...]]

*** If you manage to beat Bowser by way of GameShark, [[UnwinnableByDesign the game crashes itself]].

** In Chapter 3 of the second game, you can't beat the Iron Clefts the first time you fight them. After they beat you, you get a new party member, a Yoshi, who comes with an ability that can damage them.

* In ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiPartnersInTime Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time]]'', Mario and Luigi must fight three Shroobs near the beginning. However, the Shroobs are aided by a giant bomb-carrying UFO that destroys the brothers after three turns, making the fight impossible to win. The intention is for Baby Mario and Baby Luigi to then come to the rescue of their adult counterparts, the UFO being removed in the second fight. If you are to use an Action Replay, the game will act as if you lost.
* In ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiBowsersInsideStory Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story]]'' Bowser's first fight is with Midbus in which you learn how to fight. Then Bowser starts feeling weak because of the Vacuum Mushroom and loses. However, if you beat Midbus with an Action Replay, you get no experience or coins, and the following cutscene just acts like he defeated you. In that case, it makes for a HeadsIWinTailsYouLose boss fight, just like the previous example.

*** There also when you fight the game's BigBad, Kuja. At first it looks like you're going to beat him (prior to fighting him you beat someone that he was confident he couldn't beat), but then he goes into a superform and defeats with his ultimate move.

** Early on in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' the party is attacked by Ba'Gamnan and his crew. If you've been leveling normally, it is extremely difficult to win this fight, and the game makes it clear that you're supposed to run away from them (all the way back out of the dungeon you've been going through.) [[spoiler:You fight them again later as a mark]]. Interestingly, if you've done enough level grinding (or gotten everyone a Quickening), you can beat them here, but you still have to leave the dungeon manually - and the game still shows your guest party member running on ahead of you at each zone transition as though you were running away.

* Frequently shows up in the ''Franchise/TalesSeries'' as well:
** In ''VideoGame/TalesOfDestiny'', Leon is nearly impossible to beat the first time you face him, which is quite early in the game. If you do manage to win, you get a [[NonstandardGameOver special ending]] right then without playing through most of the game.

*** Lloyd, the first boss of the game is normally unbeatable, but if you can carry your strongest monsters over to your [[NewGamePlus second playthrough]], he's somewhat beatable, thus netting you at least 10 levels of experience. But the story advances as if you lost.

** Straight after the battle with Master Eddy in ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'', you wash up on a beach with all your items gone, and all your characters at a mere 1 HP and 0 MP. Healing your party is impossible without eating from the nearby patch of hallucinogenic mushrooms (an important plot point for this chapter), and there's an enemy Zombieshroom blocking your path forward which, in your party's current state, is suicide to encounter and should be impossible to defeat. If, by savestate-hacking yourself to recovery, you manage to defeat the Zombieshroom without having eaten the mushrooms first, the Zombieshroom simply reappears after battle to block your path again.
*** The trope is averted in the battle against [[spoiler: Porky]]. When you reduce his HP to zero, he gets into a capsule that makes him completely immune to any attack you throw at him, making it look like you are about to be crushed in battle. However, the boss also lacks any attacks of his own and after a few rounds, the party decides nothing can be done against him and he can't do anything to them, so they just stop fighting and move on.

** Somewhat subverted in VideoGame/Disgaea3AbsenceOfJustice [[spoiler: - you actually appear to defeat the Overlord, only for him to shrug off the damage]].

** SoulNomad features a battle against a World Eater very early on.

* Koei games seem particularly prone to this trope.

** Finally, in Chapter 4 of the second game, you have multiple encounters with a ghost who has stolen your identity (don't ask). Until you discover his name, he can't hurt you and you can't hurt him.

* Quite a few of these show up in ''XenobladeChronicles'', and they'll end if everyone gets KO'd, a certain amount of time passes, or if you cause enough damage to the boss. In the latter two situations, the boss will simply send everyone flying with a special attack to end the fight. Their HP also simply stops decreasing once it reaches the "You lose" threshold, so you can't win even on a NewGamePlus, where you could realistically OHKO some of them otherwise.

** In Chapter 3 of the second game, you can't beat the Iron Clefts the first time you fight them. After they beat you, you get a new party member, a Yoshi, who comes with an ability that can damage them -- at least, [[GameBreakingBug when the game's working properly.]]

*** This is done on purpose, because he asks you to guess his name earlier in the game, but people who have already played (or read a guide) know his name when Mario shouldn't. So they removed a letter from the name-entering screen so whether you know his name or not, you can't enter it until you find out his name in-game.

* At one point during the main storyline of ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'', you are unexpectedly pitted against Lavos, the final boss. Defeating him early results in a [[MultipleEndings secret ending]] that is not canon; unless you've somehow managed to max out the level of all your characters by this point, or are playing a NewGamePlus, doing so is nigh impossible. He will surely attack first, and will use a TotalPartyKill attack that, assuming you leveled up normally, is instant death. You'll barely survive it at a decent level. To drive the point home, this iteration is actually even more powerful than the "standard" final boss; he hits harder and attacks faster than normal, just to make sure you lose. Disappointingly, even if you win, you don't get to see Queen Zeal's reaction to the "invincible" Lavos being defeated right in front of her.

** An aversion is the battle against the Blue Knight while trying to escape from the castle early in the game. It's a timed battle, and he's very strong, so that it seems like you'll lose if you take too long, but you can't win if you rush him. The timed battle aspect is false: no matter how long you take to kill him, you'll win.

* In ''EternalSonata'' Frederic Chopin and Polka come up against a mysterious young man wielding a katana (Fugue). A well-leveled player with [[ActionCommands good timing]] ''might'' be able to survive ''one'' of his combos... barely. If you somehow manage to last two rounds against him, he starts using an [[OneHitKill unblockable, infinite-range attack that deals about 125% your current HP]] called "Deus Ex Machina."
* There's a Hopeless Boss Fight in ''PhantasyStarIV''; if you insult it by acting greedy instead of heroic, but you can beat it with enough Game Genie-ing, though you lose the spell you should have gotten from it in the process.
** A similar situation occurs in ''PhantasyStarII''. If you kill the security robots coming to arrest you by cheating, ScriptBreaking happens and you can't progress through the plot.
** The original ''PhantasyStar'' has what initially seems to be a Hopeless Boss Fight with the "Saccubus", a monster that appears once you fall asleep in the Governer's Mansion and quickly decimates your party at normal levels. Fortunately, it was AllJustADream. With a bit of LevelGrinding, however, it's entirely possible to take down the Saccubus - earning the reward of one single meseta.
** The true Hopeless Boss Fight of ''PhantasyStarIV'' is actually against Zio the Black Magician, who cannot be defeated due to his [[PlotArmor Magic Barrier]], although further into the game you collect an item that will disable the barrier.
** Also in ''PhantasyStarIV'' are the carnivorous trees on Dezolis, which are used to block progress until you have the Eclipse Torch. They are unbeatable in that they will continually respawn forever. When they are approached with the Eclipse Torch in your inventory, though, they are instantly destroyed, without a fight.

* Late in ''[[VideoGame/EarthBound Mother (EarthBound Zero)]]'' is a robot boss that's too powerful for you to beat. Once it defeats your party, [[BigDamnHeroes one of your friends shows up in a tank and obliterates it]]. There are two other robot bosses which are defeated in strange ways as well, without which you would be unable to win.

* The PlayStation RPG Koudelka has two of these:

** Straight after the battle with Master Eddy, you wash up on a beach with all your items gone, and all your characters at a mere 1 HP and 0 MP. Healing your party is impossible without eating from the nearby patch of hallucinogenic mushrooms (an important plot point for this chapter), and there's an enemy Zombieshroom blocking your path forward which, in your party's current state, is suicide to encounter and should be impossible to defeat. If, by savestate-hacking yourself to recovery, you manage to defeat the Zombieshroom without having eaten the mushrooms first, the Zombieshroom simply reappears after battle to block your path again.

*** Doubles as a poorly implemented example of this trope: Malak is [[{{Anticlimax}} incredibly weak]] in this appearance, is easily bested and actually ''flees'' at one point before [[spoiler: Bastila]] "sacrifices" herself to buy you time to escape, massively lessening the impact of said sacrifice in the process. Doubly irritating since in his FinalBoss form, he's way more difficult.

*** If you manage to beat Bowser by way of GameShark, [[spoiler:[[UnwinnableByDesign the game crashes itself]].]]

* {{LufiaTheLegendReturns}} has lots of these. The first few battles with Gades, the Ancient Dragon M, the first few battles with Daos...of course, as mentioned above, if you do manage to win a Hopeless Boss Fight, you get a sweet item, then the boss kills you in a cutscene.

* ''VideoGame/RomancingSaGa'' had this with the Diamond Fatestone, it is possible to win, but very hard considering your levels at the time you talk to Schiele the final time, especially on NewGamePlus where even after talking to her once after clearing the event in prior playthroughs, the event will trigger.

* In the first ''SaGa'' game (''FinalFantasy Legend'' in the US), three of the worlds feature demons whose appearance signals the end of that world's plot. On the fourth level, however, the level boss Su-Zaku attacks pretty much constantly -- but he's immune to (almost) all possible attacks. After you develop the weapon to defeat his shield, he becomes frustratingly less ubiquitous and has to be tracked down. Oddly, due to a bug in the combat code, he is not in fact invulnerable to all attacks in previous encounters; the Saw instant-death weapon (which is a GameBreaker due to a programming error) can defeat the otherwise invulnerable Su-Zaku, but doing so [[ScriptBreaking does not prevent his reappearance or advance the plot in any way]].
** In addition, a character with high enough stats will have no problem slicing through his 255 defense.
** In ''SagaFrontier2'', Wil Knight's team has to run away from a human transformed into a giant beast; this battle is unwinnable regardless of how much level grinding you do. (You can, however, challenge it again if you so choose.)
*** In an earlier chapter, Wil's team fights against two dragons which will kill you under normal conditions, then one of your allies will get back up and commit a HeroicSacrifice, killing the two dragons and healing the party. If you don't have that specific ally in your party, you lose the fight for good.
** In ''VideoGame/SagaFrontier'', the first fight of Red's game, against Shuzer, requires you to get pummeled into the dirt, so Alkarl can show up to save the day.

* In the PC version of the famous D&D adventure ''TempleOfElementalEvil'', an evil god by the name of Iuz will suddenly join a battle which your party would've (by this stage of the game) been able to win reasonably well. Iuz has a VERY large number of hit points, and can easily kill a healthy barbarian in a couple of strikes. The idea is to [[spoiler: try to avoid getting your entire team slaughtered (which can happen very quickly), until a couple of turns later another god shows up. At this point, everyone in the team is resurrected, as are the enemies, the two gods disappear, and the whole fight starts over from scratch. In other words, you're expected to try to survive for as long as you can]]. Surprisingly, there are actually people who've defeated the god, and the designers even added an extra "achievement" reward which is acknowledged in the endgame slideshow. Good luck though, it is extremely difficult.

* In ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiBowsersInsideStory Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story]]'' Bowser's first fight is with Midbus in which you learn how to fight. Then Bowser starts feeling weak because of the Vacuum Mushroom and loses. However, if you beat Midbus with an Action Replay, you get no experience or coins, and the following cutscene just acts like he defeated you. In that case, it makes the bossfight a HeadsIWinTailsYouLose boss fight, just like the previous example.

* The first encounter with Bradley in ''{{Dubloon}}''. Considering he attacks you before you can even prepare your attack, he could just as easily beat you up ''in a cutscene''[[hottip:* :Not even to mention his attack may do ''less damage than your hit point max''.]].

*** If you manage to beat Bowser in Paper Mario for N64 (by way of GameShark), [[spoiler:[[UnwinnableByDesign the game crashes itself]].]]